It is said that St Lazarus never smiled after.
 
                                            After being
                                            raised from the dead —

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What was Bethany like,
                      mouth of the tomb agape
                      in a long yawn?
 
                      How many people arrived as witness?
 
[Was the linen cloth — like old habits dying
                                     hard, oh Mary Undoer of Knots —
           unwrapped or pulled off,
           in leavings, our old remains both material and not?
 
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This is all germane matter, on the dotted nose.
 
                               What do they say,
                               about cutting off your nose,
                                        only to spite the face?
 
           What do they say about our open wounds
           of overlong wrongdoing
                            one offense after another
                                      against reason and truth,
                                      against right conscience?
 
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[Reading scripture brings out the proverbial,
                    and life reads itself into the idiomatic,
                                          — timely, versified.]
 
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So, this is what awe and hope look like,
                                             their faces as ashen?
 
So, this is what unbelief looks like, also?
 
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How does the Johannine Gospel read now,
the account where even death doesn't have the last word?
 
Where does language go beyond each epoch—
                                    the words, how they thread
                                    across the plains and more language?
 
                                            Lost
                                                         in time,
                                            then unearthed
 
                                   into the soft light
                                   of day and all who arrived
 
                                                                       to see.