John Donne is one of my favorite poets. Most years I read his divine poem on Good Friday, and I send love to the close friends I have who are believers.

I started this sonnet in 1998 and just tweaked it a bit. Perhaps I’ll modify it more in two years, for the quadricentennial of Donne’s composition.

Again I westward walk and then the train
continues under water west to work
on crucifixion day. Again my brain
appreciates a poem by Donne. From clerk
of old to cleric comrades I adjust
my thought, while Easter puts on fresh pastels.
Commuting west contemplative, I trust
myself to filter out the myths and spells.

An awful story climaxes today,
its joyous resolution two days hence,
but few around me seem aware. The way
they walk asleep belies intelligence
of what it means. I pray they wake again
by Sunday, Easter glad to sing Amen.

Here is John Donne’s poem:

Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward

Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motions, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey:
Pleasure or business, so our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it.
Hence is it that I am carried towards the West
This day, when my soul’s form bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sun, by rising, set,
And by that setting endless day beget;
But that Christ on this Cross, did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees God’s face, that is self life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made his own lieutenant Nature shrink;
It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands which span the poles,
And tune all spheres at once, pierc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height which is
Zenith to us, and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our souls, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God, for His apparel, ragg’d, and torn?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
Upon His miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus
Half of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look’st towards me,
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
I turn my back to Thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore Thine Image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.