Gethsemane

“ . . . and it was night” (John 13:30)

When sky and soul alike were dark with night,
when men were all asleep in dreams of sin,
a second garden held our hope: within
a second Adam bled to end our blight.
His taintless nature, shaken at the sight
of sins grown rank and tangled in his kin,
blushed in a bloody sweat of hot chagrin
that soaked our sullied earth and washed it white.

Could we but glimpse the horror of that garden,
the vision of his anguish would suffice
to lop our noxious shoots before they harden
and cut the knotted tendrils of our vice:
then would we burn our deadwood, seeking pardon,
and strive to mitigate that pardon’s price.