XIX
LINEN

Your body is white linen, a fragile cloth
which God made from the obscure soil
of the earth and bound with His Thought
—invisible, because it was naked—making it
a garment that illuminated the world
with the light of the Word, a timeless cloak
embroidered with countless stars.
And the linen was tinted with a royal purple           John 19:5.
extracted from the sea of the abysses
—from the sea where those who were rest
next to those who will be—; it became
a shroud of love for the one who dies.
The angry crowd violently stripped           Mark 15:20.
the purple cloak from the creative Word,
but the Word picked up its garment
and, putting in on again like a cloak,
stretched it like a canopy over our sky.

The Creator of the infinite vision
of a cluster of wandering stars
encircling our globe—an extinguished spark—
with the omnipotent power of
His invisible incorporeal hands,
took the ashes from our earth to weave,
during nine months in the womb
of an unknown maiden, the tunic
which the souls which would be born,
might see covering His nakedness.