You understand the colors on the hillside have faded, we have the gray and brown and lavender of late autumn, the apple and pear trees have lost their leaves, the mist of November is often with us, especially in the afternoon and toward evening, as it was today when I sat gazing up into the orchard for a long time they way I do now, thinking of how I died last winter and was revived. And I tell you I saw there a cross with a man nailed to it, silvery in the mist, and I said to him: "Are you the Christ?" And he must have heard me, for in his agony, twisted as he was, he nodded his head affirmatively, up and down, once and twice. And a little way off I saw another cross with another man nailed to it, twisting and nodding, and then another and another, ranks and divisions of crosses straggling like exhausted legions upward among the misty trees, each cross with a silvery, writhing, twisting, nodding, naked figure nailed to it, and some of them were women. The hill was filled with crucifixion. Should I not be telling you this? Is it excessive? But I know something about death now, I know how silent it is, silent even when the pain is shrieking and screaming. And tonight is very silent and very dark. When I looked I saw nothing out there, only my own reflected head nodding a little in the window glass. It was as if the Christ had nodded to me, all those writhing silvery images on the hillside, and after a while I nodded back to him. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INDEPENDENCE by HENRY DAVID THOREAU A BALLAD OF THE HEATHER by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 7 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING HOW THE SONG WAS MADE by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON THE FLYING SQUIRREL by MARY E. BURT FAMILIAR EPISTLES ON A SERMON, 'OFFICE & OPERATIONS OF HOLY SPIRIT': 3 by JOHN BYROM ANSWER TO SOME ELEGANT VERSES SENT BY A FRIEND by GEORGE GORDON BYRON |