Isaiah 53
Is there anyone to believe
what we've listened to
as we report it
who is there
who's actually seen the Lord's
arm around the shoulders
of the despised this richness
incredible support
freely given to him
who would have believed
seeing we were as unconscious of him
among us as a common tree
a weed tree in a lot
junk-strewn in a poor section
of the city
what could have been there
to attract us no handsomeness
nothing to divert the eye
how could we even turn our heads
for something so poor in our eyes
so uninspiring
he was a thing rejected
despised for being human
in an offensive suit of clothes
the clothes of suffering
a shirt of pain
a cloak of sorrow
a coat the solid color
of loss worldly indifference
like leprosy written across his face
so densely it hurt to look
as if we'd only see
ourselves reflected in it
as in a dense layer of dust
over a window
in an ancient place we've long forgotten
we don't want to remember
we loathe that place
we despise weakness
and he meant nothing to us
a blight on our existence
we couldn't even condone his existence
but it was our
loss and our
pain he bore
our hidden fear and indifference
he wore
openly for us
while we wrote him off as beneath us
as an example of God's vengeance
as being even our own self-vindication
he was punished
tortured by disease
to condone our fear
hidden under a worldly cloak
thrown over our unconscious
we've swept it out of sight
we wrote it off
with the hurt and loss
as if struggle and pain
were not a human bond
a mirror in which to see
ourselves
not an unreflecting
stone
fear symbol
but he was shattered
for our heart of stone
he was locked in ghettoes
for our hidden guilt
and we are made human
together
in the punishment and contempt
he wears in the world
on this earth for us
in black and blue
our eyes can see it
and we are healed by that seeing
he makes us real
we were all victims
we were all sheep
we strayed we were lost
we wandered away
lost in ourselves
we were all nations
servants of our own
interests
we made our own selfish way
slavishly alone
each with our own patch of lust
in the unconscious pasture
of self-indulgence
trespassers of spirit
silent accomplices of thugs
on the highway of feeling
that is the Lord's
that is his word
and the Lord has chose
his servant to carry it
a bürden of pain on his naked back
beyond power of men to lay on him
it is the guilt of us all
made real
the guilt inside us
the abyss we were losing
our richness of feeling in
and now we see how cheaply
we've papered over loss
how openly it's borne
beyond our power to pay
he was a low animal in our eyes
a carrier of disease
and we treated him
lower than dogs
but he didn't open his mouth
for bitterness
he was open to the core
he was a lamb
led to slaughter
he was an innocent sheep
as his coat is shorn from him
but he was human he suffered
and like a lamb his mouth didn't open
out of bitterness
and he was led away
stripped of his rights
shorn of his humanity
not a shred of justice for him
not a mouth opened for him
he was deported
he was sentenced
out of existence itself
like a nation marked for death
he was led into the fire
of bitter hatred
he was led alive
into ovens he burned
as indifferently to the world as an ordinary lamp
turned on at evening
a lamp of skin
and no one gave it thought
he was a flame
lit in the darkness of terror
he was a light
to the truly guilty
those ho deserved to be lost
in their own land
in their own bitter darkness
in the abyss
of their hidden guilt
my own people were blind
but his eyes were true
suffering the world for them
and the world gave him a grave
unmarked like a criminal's
like a mass grave
the way cattle are buried
the way refuse is dispose of
the way a rich man
orders cut flowers
like common flowers crushed beside the highway
he was nothing he was in the way
he was banned from sight victimized
by a decadent justice
a worldly masquerade
of men dressed up in power
he was naked innocent of crime
not guilty of even a common lie
but the Lord allowed him to feel
pain to be open
to injustice as to disease
to be vulnerable as an animal
given in spirit of sacrifice
a faith in human future
and out of that death march
through the fire
out o that holocaust
out of the deepest abyss
beyond torture and despair
out of sheer hell furnaces
he comes through
piercing through the guilt
deep fear and self-contempt
of all the world
because he gave himself whole
persistently human
transcending spears of bitterness
and for his pain
the pain of all creation
he will have children again
and he will see them
as sure as they will feel
his soul
and the deep consolation spoken
in the openness allowed
by the Lord
by his hand
through his words
through the pure insistence
to bear his words
in human hands his servant
out of the massive depths of pain
into the daylight
of a living nation
that is his future illuminated
as real and warm as a body
lit by the color of feeling
my servant an example
lighting the steps up
from deep depression beneath the surface
everywhere
a struggle for the merest foothold
in the mass of people and nations
and out of the inhuman scars the clawing
he made his heart a vessel
out of the storm the raging
of primitive pride
he carried my justice a lightness
in his nameless heart open
a room without walls
room for the lowest and highest
guilt all that is borne within
and without: the word is his
to share with the richest nations
in the present
I make his future present
and the mouths of worldly power
fall open in awe
at the beauty
the utter reality lade bare
of life itself
because he opened his heart
totally putting it in the hands
of death
speaking straight through a transparent life
from his soul
and his nakedness was a menace
he was judged for his skin
what is visible to the lowest
a disgrace to worms
dressed in material
of pride
a crime to those human eyes
locked up in themselves
and he was given the final clothes
of death dust of the earth
and he wore the deaths
of those with murder in their hearts
and the criminal thoughts
of all in self-hating prisons
and he was stripped of his self
for sheer integrity
of the deeper language
of creation
and he was scarred
in his openness
beyond worldly recognition
for the self-debased to see
their disease in him
and he was crushed by weight
of their hidden guilt revealed
he heard it is the creator speaking
words of life
you will survive by them
your voice: lightness of breath itself
clothe the cold and hidden
hearts of stone
and warm in the dark
the unborn vulnerable as you were
your light into the future.