Easter Trilogy: 1: Good Friday Poem by David Mitchell

Alas! the Lord is dying now, and soon He will be dead!
And all our sins innum'rable are laid upon His head!
It's we who are responsible, it's we who've caused this loss -
We have condemn'd this guiltless God to die upon a cross.

We knew Thee not, alas! O Lord, we cared not who Thou wert;
O miserable people, who could dare to do such hurt:
The robber we let go, and shouted 'Jesus crucify! '
What mattered it to us whether the Lord should live or die?

At this momentous hour the temple's vail was rent in twain:
We thought that we should never see Thyself alive again:
And it did not then seem to us to be remotely odd
That an enemy centurion said: This was the Son of God.

At this momentous hour a horrid dark spread o'er the land;
The earth did quake in fear in every town and every sand;
The universe itself in every atom seemed to say:
Be sorrowful, O man, for you have killed your God today.

(Friday,14th April,2006.)