Oh read the verses of the loaded scourges,

And what is written in their terrible remarks:

“The Blood runs down the walls of Cambridge town,

As useless as the waters of the narrow rive—

While pub and alley gamble for His vesture.”

Although my life is written on Christ’s Body like a map,

The nails have printed in those open hands

More than the abstract names of sins,

More than the countries and the towns,

The names of streets, the numbers of the houses,

The record of the days and nights,

When I have murdered Him in every square and street.

Lance and thorn, and scourge and nail

Have more than made His Flesh my chronicle.

My journeys more than bite His bleeding feet.

Christ, from my cradle, I had known You everywhere,

And even though I sinned, I walked in You, and knew You were my world:

You were my France and England, My seas and my America:

You were my life and air, and yet I would not own You.

Oh, when I loved You, even while I hated You,

Loving and yet refusing You in all the glories of Your universe

It was Your living Flesh I tore and trampled, not the air and earth:

Not that You feel us, in created things,

But knowing You, in them, made every sin a sacrilege;

And every act of greed became a desecration,

Spoiled and dishonored You as in Your Eucharist.

And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime,

And as each blow was paid with Blood,

You paid me also each great sin with greater graces.

For even as I killed You,

You made Yourself a greater thief than any in Your company,

Stealing my sins into Your dying life,

Robbing me even of my death.

Where, on what cross my agony will come

I do not ask You:

For it is written and accomplished here,

On every Crucifix, on every altar.

It is my narrative that drowns and is forgotten

In Your five open Jordans,

Your voice that cries my: “Consummatum est.”

If on Your Cross Your life and death and mine are one,

Love teaches me to read, in You, the rest of a new history.

I trace my days back to another childhood,

Exchanging, as I go,

New York and Cuba for Your Galilee,

And Cambridge for Your Nazareth,

Until I come again to my beginning,

And find a manger, star and straw,

A pair of animals, some simple men,

And thus I learn that I was born,

Now not in France, but Bethlehem.