Do we place you in a tomb? - Andrew King

Do we place you in a tomb, Loving One?
Do we wrap God’s saving love in funeral spices?
Having seen justice pierced, truth undone,
corruption’s blade red-edged by power’s devices

and faithfulness in us made frail by fear,
do we gather up our hundred-weight of grief
and give a silent thanks a tomb is near
where hope may be interred and bruised belief

put on death’s pale and clinging shroud?
Does our frail flesh bear your body there,
beloved, who last night, serving us, bowed,
whose now hurt healing hands so cared

for all the wounded, weary, weak?
Do we deliver to death’s endless cave
your words of peace, and no more speak
of hope, of love, of the life you gave?

Our feet on such a walk surely stumble.
Your light once shone into the world’s shadow.
Now our way is dark. Our fingers fumble
for a candle. O, how can we let you go?

Do we place you in a tomb, Loving One?

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Andrew King (born c. 1952) USA
Source Andrew's blog: A Poetic Kind Of Place