Third Person Neuter
Is God mad? Was Christ
crazy? Is truth
the legal truth? (Three PhDs who swear
the human being who believes
a human being God
is what, in fairness, speaking
clinically, we call
a nut.) No jury,
given sacred laws
of science and democracy, would now
forgive so big a claim as Christ's—a claim
for good. (The wounded get
their settlements in millions, not
worlds-without-end.) We think of bliss
as ignorance, and heaven as naiveté: the doctor's
a philosopher, the priest a practicing
apologist. Not one of them
will let me see
with my own eyes my friend again.
When experts gave him time, it made
his luck and language die. What good
was love? It was the ultimate
authority to quit.
He had no use
for flesh at last
and, Christ,
I'm made of it.
by Heather McHugh
from Shades;
Wesleyan University Press, 1988