For this joyful day of celebration, we feature a contemporary Easter poem by ESN author and scholar of early modern literature David Parry. We’re honored to be the first publication to share it.

For Easter

The star-crowned glory
of the fallen fair,
the fairly thrown down
thralls of princely hue,
the flaring brightness
shadowed, shadowing the sun,
the circling oneness
shattered, fallen, dulled.

And so, continuing
in procession, proceeding
out of preceding plenty
squandered, abandoned, spent;
proceeding piteously, painfully
encountering the day
with bleeding colours blackened,
beauty battered and bruised.

And then, the star-crowned
glory of the chosen, now
the freely broken beauty
of that brightening sun;
embattled, burning up with
yearning for the dawn
of life, encompassed with
encircling death.

And now, the frozen field
of fallen finds itself fractured,
feels itself opened by a probing
touch of light now rising,
blazing earth’s frigidity
into startled fecundity,
questioning, pushing the seed
to the brink.

Image credit: Bartolo, Andrea di, -1428. Resurrection of Christ, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55333 [retrieved April 8, 2017]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_di_Bartolo_-_The_Resurrection_-_Walters_37741.jpg.