Excerpt from the 2nd Sorrowful Mystery

“…Downward the lashes fall
To find flesh, nerve, the spurt of blood,
Sinew,
And all the anguish of a Mother’s heart,
Torn with His latticed back,
Beaten with every blow,
Feeling the whining, greedy whips cut through
The very core of her before they reach
Her guiltless Son.


If Jesus at the end, flung to the floor
Partly by almost death,
Partly by soldiers’ pity as they grant
Rest after torture,
Partly by cruelty that laid
Raw flesh upon cold stone…
If then He lifted agonizing eyes to see
Close to the cellar casement, through the bars,
Her watching face…
Or if in vision, as the saints have thought,
She stood close to the pillar
Where they beat Him down,
A writhing worm, no longer quite a man…
Was there for Him a solace in her woe?
Or was it doubled agony that she should share
However willingly
These scourging blows
Rained by the lustful men
In penalty
For all the lustful deeds of those
Who loved the flesh too sadly and too well?

Who knows
Save only He who bore the blows
Of our offences
And the lovely she
Whose guiltless body knew, proxy perhaps,
The scourges that His guiltless body bore
For all the guilty bodies of the world
And all our guilty flesh.

Ah, if perhaps, his bloody business done,
One soldier dropped his scourge and cried,
"Forgive!"...
If but one callous guard,
Seeing the bits of flesh
Upon the whip within his grip
Or, catching a glimpse of Mary's tortured eyes
There at the casement,
Flung to the farthest wall
The ugly thing that beat his God...
If that had been...

Or if today somewhere
Lust knows itself as lust and cries the shame
Which pampered flesh
The while it tortured His and hers,
Mary is glad, and Jesus smiles
Up from the column where they whittled Him
To writhing pain.
Mary is glad, and Jesus with joy
Forgives."