On yesterday’s strange Maundy Thursday I started a poem which I finished this good friday morning and I thought I would share it with you here a day late. As always you can hear me read it by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title
Maundy Thursday, All the World is still
Maundy Thursday, all the world is still
The planes wait, grounded by departure gates
The street is empty and the shopping mall
Deserted. Padlocked, the playground waits
Against the day that children play again
Till then our sad refrain is just refrain
Maundy Thursday, all the world is still
And Jesus is at supper with his friends
No longer in the upper room, that hall
In Zion where the story starts and ends,
For he descended from it long ago
To find his new friends in the here and now
Maundy Thursday, all the world is still
And Jesus is at supper with his friends
Our doors are locked for fear, but he has skill
In breaking barriers. With ease he bends
Our prison bars, slips past the sentry post
And joins us as the guest who is our host.
Maundy Thursday All the world is still
But in cramped quarters on the fifteenth floor,
In lonely towers made of glass and steel,
And in the fierce favelas of the poor,
Touching with wounded hands the wounds he tends
Christ Jesus is at supper with his friends.
Malcolm Guite 
beautiful, I love it. I started a poem on Tuesday I am trying to finish today – not in your league though!
Really beautiful, thank you.
Louise
So beautiful, yet emotional, thank you, Malcolm.
Your words are a welcome solace especially during these times. Thank you for a place of respite.
Thanks
Thank you for this moving poem reminding us that He tends our wounds with His wounded hands
Thanks
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. This opened something inside of me and has me thinking. I’m glad you finished this poem this morning and didn’t set it aside.
Thanks
Beautiful.
You obviously listen well. It’s proven by your words.
Thanks
Thanks for the poem. It answers these times.
Thanks
All the world is still. I had a dream about giant cats in my house, and a cobra. The cobra tried to strike me, I held it the way snake handlers do, and it left. A tiger came through. The snake tried again, I grasped it once more. A cheetah came through. The snake tried once more. I bridled it once more, and I felt the head of a lion on my lap. And the words, “Be Still.” And we are.
Sometimes he does speak to us through dreams
What a phrase to capture our present tragic predicament_ ‘,Our sad refrain is just ‘refrain.’The slow build up is measured, with hints/overtones of other moments from the gospel/post resurrection events.{ children playing; locked doors, breaks barriers – Eden) The silence of a world made still in the fACE OF OVERWHELMING CATASTROPHE ( 1st stanza). It starts, for me, with the silence and profundity we feel when we gaze at the Leonardp ‘Last Supper (perhaps) , But no! JESUS IS NOT A MERE hISTORICAL’ figure – he’s moved off the canvas, leapt from the stained glass, he will descend from the cross – the Medieval rood, and can be felt in the dynamic of love in action that’s sweeping our world. Jesus is with the clapping and saucepan banging crowds onan April evening – applauding the healers. He’s standing close, so close ( not 2 metres away) , squeezed in among strangers. He stands with them on their crosses – in the supermarket alleys and car-[arks. He supports the healing warriors in their vizors, and PPE’s , behind the barriers that admit no-one except the sick. Outside, lie discarded fruit.
Thank you for picking up so much that is in the poem and yes he is there, squeezed in, in every way in our midst
Thank you, Malcolm, for these powerful words
of love and encouragement. The Christ of “long ago” is abundantly present in the present moment.
Thanks be to God!
Thanks
So beautiful
Sent from my iPhone
>
Thanks
Thank you, Malcolm. Once again you speak to my heart – now with this beautiful reminder for our time, as we sit solitary at the table of remembrance this morning, that “Christ Jesus is at supper with his friends”. Though separated we remember in community.
Thanks Glenda
Heaven invades earth! Thank you for that beautiful reminder, Malcolm
Thank you for this!
Pingback: A New Maundy Thursday Poem — Malcolm Guite – Truth Troubles