I.
Here is your son, of tender flesh,
Revealer of what lies beneath.
Divine and flesh and blood enmeshed,
The pain of healing to you bequeathed.
Young Sophia’s wisdom spoken
Impressed the mind but not the stone,
Of monument or heart unbroken
He gathered crowds but walked alone
In wilderness, the hungry fed;
The sick healed by Immanuel,
But stones he would not turn to bread,
Nor quell your fears or turn them well.
“A sword will pierce your own side,”
A mother’s pain inseparable,
From what the powers try to hide,
These hidden chords unbreakable.
So you who bore the man of sorrows
Bore the sorrow of the One
Who bore the sorrow of the many
Here, oh mother, behold your son
II.
Here is your mother, just outside
Who loved you in her poverty,
And spent her might and cast aside
Her life for God’s strange sovereignty.
“Who is my mother or my brother?”
Heard from the mouth whose lips you kissed,
You’re always standing just outside;
There is no sharper sword than this.
‘I’ll set a man against his kin.’
Strange way to heal; to pitch a throne,
And yet he brings the outside in;
Remembers mothers not his own.
Trayvon and Floyd, Breonna too,
Are children of a different mother;
These children who are gone too soon
His true kin; Sister, Mother; Brother.
Weeping mothers always he hears,
Including you, oh blessed one.
He yet will still and calm your fears
Here, oh mother, behold your son.
III.
The hour is getting closer now,
The ax already at the root.
First sign, fine wine, wedding vow,
Now new wine pressed from strangest fruit.
From breasts that fed, and tender kiss,
And warm embrace from arms that swayed,
To cold heart, warm lips, hand that dips,
Your son, dear mother, now betrayed.
Wise sage wisdom; prophet wild,
Sophia too strong, too far grown.
He saved everyone one else’s child,
But look, he would not save your own.
Again you’re standing just outside,
And feel your sword pierce sharper still.
You feel the pain mothers can’t hide
And watch Love hanging on that hill
Yet look, he brings the outside in,
One final task is to be done:
“Here is my mother; now your kin,”
Here, oh mother, behold your son.
Image credit: https://equitablegrowth.org/elevating-economic-research-on-racist-violence-and-exclusion-in-the-united-states/black-woman-crying/