The Virtue of Fortitude

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”

The sick boy is so brave, they always
say.
But what else can he do?
He acts brave in his tragedy
because he
only
knows that script.
(As do they.)
The nurses praise his brave fight,
but hear him cry at night.

Maybe another
boy loses
his father;
tragic accident;
made the
front page.
Sad at his age:
cut down in his prime,
taken before his time.
Now it is not the easy advice
his boy will miss,
on how to grow.
No.
It is the advice the old
man who will never arrive
would have given
on the passing of much time
and gracious decline.

We are like the dumb animals,
stupid in our suffering,
unable to see what the
future will bring.
Dumb Hope in our upturned
eyes, our feelings tossed
about, now up, now down;
fighting wounded because
no-one will tell us
what we have already lost.
That will be revealed,
with painstaking slowness.
For Time is an expert torturer,
keeping Hope alive
so wounds become stigmata.

by Julian O’Dea

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