WEBVTT

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This poem is called
"Crucifixion."

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"You understand the colors
on the hillside have faded.

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We have the gray and brown
and lavender of late autumn.

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The apple and pear trees
have lost their leaves.

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The mist of November
is often with us,

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especially in the afternoon
and toward evening

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as it was today
when I sat gazing up

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into the orchard for a long
time, the way I do now.

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Thinking of how I died last
winter and was revived.

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And I tell you I saw there a
cross with a man nailed to it.

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Silvery in the mist, and I said
to him, are you the Christ,

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and he must have heard me
for in his agony twisted

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as he was, he nodded his head
affirmatively up and down,

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once and twice.

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And a little way off,
I saw another cross

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with another man nailed to it,
twisting and nodding, and then

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another, and another.

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Ranks and divisions
of crosses straggling

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like exhausted legions
upward among the misty trees,

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each cross with a silvery
writhing, twisting, nodding,

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naked, figure nailed to it,
and some of them were women.

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The hill was filled
with crucifixion.

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Should I not be
telling you this?

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Is it excessive?

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But I know something
about death now.

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I know how silent it
is, silent even when

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the pain is shrieking
and screaming

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and tonight is very
silent and very dark.

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When I looked, I saw
nothing out there, only

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my own reflected head nodding
a little in the window glass.

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It was as if the Christ
had nodded to me,

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all those writhing silvery
images on the hillside,

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and after a while, I
nodded back to him."

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