Broken Moment Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

In the high window Christ is crucified
in glass, sunlight bleeding onto the floor
shadows below. On the ceiling angels sit astride
white clouds that seem to float out of the door

into the world outside which is harsh and real,
filled with anguished nights beyond
the sunlight in which a woman briefly kneels
in the silence of so many sins still unatoned.

The respite is uncomfortable and brief:
she looks upward at Christ’s face in glass,
the wide singleness of His stare devoid of grief,
as if to reassure her only: this mortality will pass!

Then parishioners slowly start to shuffle in,
bringing to the stillness their small grief and din.