Pietà (Poem)

The first two stanzas of a poem published in The Christian Century in February 2012.

He roamed quarries at Carrara

caressing blocks of marble, tracing veins

like a blind man

to find the Virgin within. Here,

the limp arm hangs; here,

the bent head of the mother;

here, her murdered son.

He coaxed her from stone

chiseling in her face the memory of

Simeon's prophecy of a sword piercing her heart:

a wholly inadequate portent for this,

this hammer of death

harder than marble.