Poem: “Who are They by the Cross on the Hill?”
Who are They by the Cross on the Hill?
“Look at the cross on the hill!
Look! Two painstaking, glorious, deathly sad people!
Go, ask them who they are.
Maybe they can explain in full?
“The standing one – that is Mary.
Pay all your respects to her
since she is now your mother.
She recalls the gold, frankincense, and myrrh,
Given, when Jesus was a child, to her.
“O King of Kings!
O Priest of God!
O Holy Awaited Savior!
O one who would rule with an iron rod,
Why are you tortured as a thing on a table?
A sacrificing table, and you are the sacrifice;
The one who was given myrrh and spice!
“My child, my child, forgive them,
They know not who you are.
Please do not condemn, Jesus,
whose spotlight was a shining star!”
“The tortured one – that is Jesus
But is there any difference
When the son is tortured
in the sight of the mother?
Both their souls are marred.
“Now go! Ask them who they are.”
Going up the hill is tough,
But especially burdened with a cross so rough
So rough to make one fall –
Why this torture for the King of All?
Looking to the top of the hill, one can only wonder
Who are these people to let themselves die
Their beings torn asunder
They suffer on the cross together,
On the cross held fixed in the sky
Only for this; for the sakes of sinners
For the dreadfully unworthy sake of another.
Who is this woman?
Who is this Man?
Trudging up the hill.
God crowned with thorns,
And never crying still
Up the hill, one must say,
“Mary, hear me-
I don’t understand!
How can it be like this,
While injustice and sin stand?”
They stand with their head held high and proud,
As if they had won.
But where is their victory and their joyful sound
As if they had beaten GOD THE SON.
I am next to Mary now.
One word comes from my mouth, “How?”
Searching east, west, north and south,
I would never find why Christ is fined,
I would never see why Christ died for me.
Mary turns and looks at me.
I flinch and cover my face, and must
Fall to the ground on my knees in dust
Those eyes! They are torturous, because
She is a mother in pain for her kin.
O look, me, look at my ugly sin!
You wretch! You deserve, for all your evil feats…
“Quiet, my friend. Your mother speaks.”
“I do not know my own promotion
My Son is a marvel to me.
Why did it come to end in crucifixion?
My son, listen –
I have no answer to give thee.”
Marcelo Ortiz
