I. Here mothers move more than others into Mary’s mourning, each chorus a soul full of crosses, weighted with her child dying continuously in the contemplation of our contrition. II. That once-upon-a-time angel’s voice stretching anew her middle-aged womb, she who once sang Magnify, O Magnify, when all she screams for now is mercy in her urgent rebirth of sorrow. III. When he stumbles, she cannot fix his fall, cannot cradle the boyhood scrapes and bruises bleeding into crowd-sanctioned murder. No cock crows; she hears his groans as if the world’s bones are splintering within her. IV. Besides the tree, he carries the tears of the one who carried him beneath her Eve ribs, lifted him into a world he breathed as good, gone now into this God-crucified- as-her-son catastrophe for salvation’s sake. V. Simon of Cyrene stands close. Understanding too well the two sorrows— mother and son helpless to comfort the other— he heaves up and shoulders the burdens of both, his back the black tablet of Moses’ commandments fulfilled to the jot and tittle. VI. Veronica—eyes swollen for the Madonna and Child wrenched from their rightful honor— lifts her veil to cool the Savior’s pain, alleviate, however slightly, a mother’s anguish. VII. Thorns gouge the brow she stroked. The sweat-caked man that came out of her stumbles again. Already, the sharp nails gnaw her own palms. VIII. Oh, daughters of Jerusalem, your tears sweep the streets, wet the weary soles of Mary. Weep for your own children forever dashing away from Yahweh. IX. Wretched stones that tip her sinless child, dirt that drives down the innocent son. His own earth hurts him more each tumble. Three times he trips, crashes to the dust we are, mortal muscles turning their backs on Man and his Mother. X. Threads twisted by her own fingers, tugged carefully through cloth: this is the tunic they rip from him, fabric tattooed with red; she remembers his baby body blood-splattered and matted. XI. Her soul stabbed by the tree that slays her son. Her heart nailed. She swears his life spurts from her barely breathing body. XII. Death is indigo and indelible, the Roman sky collapsed and re-scribbled on the shreds of her memories. She cannot bear to look upon his face when breath forgets its maker. XIII. Ten thousand stillborns better than this: his torso in her arms, icon of the inconsolable, the flesh Pietà with its nails of pain, pounding, pounding. XIV. The hewn tomb seals her grief. She remembers his first words, his final prayer. All else rots within her. They swaddle him, implant him quickly behind stone.
This poem is from Weeknights at the Cathedral (Cincinnati: WordTech Communications, 2006) and is anthologized in slightly revised form, as here, in Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets, ed. Luke Hankins (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012). Used by permission of the author.
Note: The Stations of the Cross are a form of Catholic devotion organized around the events of Christ’s passion, from his condemnation by Pilate to his crucifixion and burial.
Marjorie Maddox (born 1959) is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Begin with a Question (Paraclete, 2022); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation from the Poiema Poetry Series (Wipf & Stock, 2018); and True, False, None of the Above (Wipf & Stock, 2016). She has also published a short story collection, four children’s and YA books, and 650-plus stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Living in Central Pennsylvania, she is a professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University and is the assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry.
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