The True Cross

Into the Holy Sepulchre they process,

The Franciscan monks, then the Armenians,

To sing their chants in rivalrous polyphony.

In the hushed chapel they celebrate Mass;

Below their feet is the bare rough crypt

Of silent prayer and meditation,

Hewn from Golgotha’s rock,

Where the Empress Helena,her long journey

Blessed at last,breathlessly seized

The wooden fragments of the True Cross,

The tree grown from the seed cast in Eden.

The old Empress, cantankerous, implacable,

Stood, holding the trophy in her hands,

And ecstasy possessed her ailing limbs

And guilty mind, as the years of sinful struggle

Fell away in eternal victory and endless empire.


History and faith conspire

In places, memories, eyewitness reports,

In us, seen and touched

By what we see and touch,

Taking religion into the body

As if knowledge and belief could be one

In the city of the real invincible symbol

Where map and compass are offered

To the wanderer, if he will only hope.