Good Friday

rose
Originally uploaded by mincaye.

Two poems for Good Friday.


Grand Chorus

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the blest above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.

--John Dryden


East Coker, Stave IV

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

--T.S. Eliot


(Not that I understand much of the above anyway...But I do enjoy the poeticism)

This is a close-up of one of the roses used by SBU for their sketch at the Easter rally this afternoon. They didn't want it after that, so I took it home; Li-Shia has another.

I tried keeping the rose in focus, and the leaves out. Looks like it worked quite well! I also increased the red and blue pigments, and created the purplish background by accident. Nice. Very nice.


Have a blessed Holy Week-end!