The Ashes On Our Foreheads

The ashes on our forehead have a name: 
Perhaps of an old, frail, and sad but ready body, 
or an interruption – sudden, tragic, 
that always could have happened, and then did, 
against our hope. 
I can name names, and so can you. 
[Name names now.] 

Please stretch with me, and hold within your ashes 
those who are not inscribed on granite risers, or sung in litanies: 
From the first occasion – when an ark floated above conscience – 
to the latest drowning of hope. [Name names now.] 

Canaan, Shechem, Moriah, 
where gods called for death against the Liege of life. 

The baptizer, beheaded, pointing to his cousin, 
Lazarus wrapped and stinking, waiting for his friend, 
Ezekiel’s rattling skeletons, waiting for the breath, 
stacked like Buchenwald, Mariupol, My Lai or Phnom Penh. 
[This is the part where, years and years and centuries from now, 
you speak of your own ashes.] 

Wherever something, not even warm as hate, 
has bid us multiply death’s power to make us strong, 
there we make fresh ashes of our own, 
imagine we are wise, know how it works, 
and give ourselves to death. 

The sin of the world and our losses
 – hate and entropy – 
now, always overturned by the offering One, 
who turns our frenzied blaming to gracious homecoming.

 

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