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Sunday
This lyric by Belfast poet W.R. Rodgers, the final poem in his 14-poem Resurrection: An Easter Sequence (1952), shows Jesus welcoming Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday. I love Rodgers’s vivid imagery of night slowly giving way to day as the truth dawns on Mary (excuse the pun). “The light had hardly scarleted the dark,” the poet writes, “or the first bird sung when Mary came in sight.” The grief that has whitened her face “like last night’s frost” will soon thaw out “as the sun/burns through the simmering muslins of the mist.”
Atthat point, her initial doubts will “morning[ ] into noon like summering bees mounting and boiling over bell flowers.” Which is another way of saying that her heart will overflow with joy.
With the resurrection, we all step out of the tombs that have been confining us.
The tomb, the tomb, that
Was her core and care, her one sore.
The light had hardly scarleted the dark
Or the first bird sung when Mary came in sight
With eager feet. Grief, like last night’s frost,
Whitened her face and tightened all her tears.
It was there, then, there at the blinding turn
Of the bare future that she met her past.
She only heard his Angel tell her how
The holding stone broke open and gave birth
To her dear Lord, and how his shadow ran
To meet him like a dog.
And as the sun
Burns through the simmering muslins of the mist,
Slowly his darkened voice, that seemed like doubt,
Morninged into noon; the summering bees
Mounted and boiled over in the bell-flowers.
“Come out of your jail, Mary,” he said, “the doors are open
And joy has its ear cocked for your coming.
Earth now is no place to mope in. So throw away
Your doubt, cast every clout of care,
Hang all your hallelujahs out
This airy day.”
