A Sequence for Iraq by Kathleen McPhilemy Tenebrae (Darkness) is the name given to the service of Matins and Lauds in the Catholic Church for the three days before Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, because the candles lighting the service are gradually extinguished until it is completely dark. Responsories are a series of verses and responses sung after the Lessons of Matins.
Sicut leo in silva
The dandelions dance with the lambs and the grass is glossy and green, but the lion is parched in the desert, he has lost himself in the desert, his pelt is the colour of sand.
At the hour when darkness is made the desert is a forest of crosses, the lion dies with the lambs; though the dandelions are bright in the fields, the lambs are butchered and lost.
Sequebatur eum a longe
We can’t understand the sorrow of the people in the land of broken things.
There is a multiplication of Marys weeping at the doors of the morgues.
The people had walked in darkness; the light when it came was blinding: who can understand their sorrow?
The people of the dolorous kingdom must live where one eye rules, where only one language is spoken.
There are children who have lost their parents, their brothers, their sisters, their arms: so much so intransigently broken.
The barbarians are bewildered with sorrow; the brokenness of the dolorous kingdom resists them, resists their technology.
Hodie portas mortis
Witness their harrowed faces as they set out to hunt through the corpses under the merciless Saturday sun.
The bodies are just as they fell, just as dead, and flyblown already.
They do not expect resurrection only the decency of burial in the cool dark, underground.
The prison doors are burst open, the doors of the banks and palaces, statues and idols lie shattered; but the hillside is stoppered with tombstones like white and motionless sheep.
Kathleen McPhilemy’s latest collection of poems, the Lion in the Forest, has just been published by Katabasis (London).
From the Lion in the Forest by Kathleen McPhilemy, published by Katabasis, London.