The Sepulchre

You are asleep today,

Enclosed within a stone.

Did I slay you then?

Or was your dying free?

I, too am entombed.

Whatever day it may be

When they take and bury my body,

Today I precede it.

While spring now stirs the earth,

A winter covers me

With pale appalling snow.

The sun underwrites my darkness;

Its light chills my bones.

And flowers bloom for a funeral.

I rest in peace with you

Upon a hard bed,

Until we rise again.

The Sister who wrote this poem says that she was having a bad day (yes, Poor Clares have bad days too!) and she thought it might help if she wrote a poem about it. It worked! Bad days are part of the human condition and as such Christ has taken them into His paschal mystery.