Jesus Wept.

The shortest sentence, I believe, in the New Testament.

Having to do with the raising of  Lazarus, and no less

the crucifixion of  Jesus himself once the Pharisees

realize the power of a voice that can call forth the dead.

Jesus seems to be identifying with this brother of Martha

and Mary, with in fact the whole weeping community.

Take away the stone, Lazarus come forth, and he that was

dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes;

and his face was bound about with a napkin. Loose him

                        Then why am I now weeping all the time,

who does not want to be called forth, let alone wrapped

in white? I believe in death, I believe in the last tree I will

ever see, perhaps with wind in it just as it’s turning color.

I believe in my friends’ weeping and in the terrible sorrow

of my wife, but why, on this side of things, with death still

only a small secret moving inside me, am I so hurt with pity

for myself, as if, one by one, anything I touch will disappear,

whatever I see deeply will suddenly become invisible to me?

Is it the loneliness, the body gone, the table and the chair

and the bowl that had the heartless flowers floating in it?

So that all that is left is whatever a soul is as your stand-in?

When I was alive I remember feeling myself  beside myself

sometimes, as if I’d already passed to somewhere else and

for that moment was in two places at once, no place and

a place without me: a moment, I suppose, so lonely it was

enough to make you weep, though not so much then but

later when the absence stayed with you and became you.