Two Good Friday poems

[David Grieve]

Good Friday 2026

 

Horrific

 

Defeat and despair.
All we had hoped for gone.
We saw him tortured and broken
and then strung up with common criminals.
We heard his cries.
We saw the death, the end of everything.

We saw his corpse taken.
A decent burial, at least.
But they won and that’s it.
What now for us?

 

 

 

Good Friday 2026

 

Mary

 

This was when the sword

pierced her heart

but left her alive

with her son’s corpse,

him whom the message

from God had spoken of

as the promise fulfilled in

the baby she wrapped

in swaddling bands

that gracious day so long ago.

A Mother inconsolable.

Who can imagine it

or find any words of comfort?

Is there any grief like her grief?