Wakening

(Found here)

He found the body gross, like mutton-fat,
the mind sour as buttermilk, as crud.
Now he wakes with dawn, still in darkness,

grown old, bones creaking like a grating door.
Sometimes he feels like the farmyard mutt
useless on three legs, all straggling hairs;

what wisdom he bears is useless as a shadow,
eyes lifeless as pond-water. But he has settled
to a comforting placidity. Prayer is silence,

spirit-bones and soul-blood fluctuant as breath.
He moves towards the judgement-door, and —
though humankind has mapped the galaxies,

filled grains of sand into a glass and called it
time — he knows the young man Lazarus fell asleep
and Jesus, weeping, slowly moved to waken him.

~John Deane