From The Last Seven Words
BY MARK STRAND
 
Someday some one will write a story set
in a place called The Skull, and it will tell,
among other things, of a parting between mother
and son, of how she wandered off, of how he vanished
in air. But before that happens, it will describe
how their faces shone with a feeble light and how
the son was moved to say, ‘Woman, look at your son,’
then to a friend nearby, ‘Son, look at your mother.’
At which point the writer will put down his pen
and imagine that while those words were spoken
something else happened, something unusual like
a purpose revealed, a secret exchanged, a truth
to which they, the mother and son, would be bound,
but what it was no one would know. Not even the writer.
 

Mark Strand was born in Canada in 1934, and died in New York in 2014, after a long and distinguished career as a poet, essayist, translator, and educator.  If you participated in the Tre Ore service on Good Friday this year, Mark Strand’s poem will sound familiar to you:  Father Tom Lucas used this cycle of poems as the basis of his reflections on the Seven Last Words, the words Jesus spoke from the cross as recorded in the Gospels.
 
This poem takes us back to Good Friday, but it also looks forward, into the ongoing role of Mary in the mystery of salvation. And mystery is what Strand captures so well in this poem.
 
From the very first line, the poem plays with time. “Someday some one will write a story set / in a place called The Skull.” “A place called The Skull” is the mount of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified—the story someone will write someday is the Gospel. The poem places us before the writing of the Gospel. It is as if we are standing at the foot of the cross. Nothing has been written down yet, and all that seems to matter in this moment is the son who hangs on the cross, and his mother who stands beside him. Strand says that the story “will tell, / among other things, of a parting between mother / and son, of how she wandered off, of how he vanished / in air.” Mary will eventually disappear from the narrative, and Jesus will “vanish” in the Ascension at the end of the Gospel. But in this moment, the relationship between mother and son is all that matters: everything else that happens is contained in that understated phrase, “among other things.”
 
The way Strand retells this familiar story makes us take a fresh look at it. Strand never says “Jesus,” “Mary,” “John,” “the beloved disciple.” Instead, we have “the son,” “the mother,” and “the friend.” We see each person in terms of their relationship to the others. Strand describes the moment quite dramatically—their faces “shone with a feeble light,” he says—he shines a spotlight on these three figures, as the familiar words are uttered: “Woman, look at your son,” and “Son, look at your mother.”
 
In the second part of the poem, Strand imagines the writer putting down his pen, and following a train of thought, imagining that “while those words were spoken / something else happened, something unusual like / a purpose revealed, a secret exchanged, a truth / to which they, the mother and son, would be bound.” The writer has recorded what happened; but what it means even the writer does not know.
 
It’s a wonderful reflection on the mystery of the life of Jesus and the power of the Gospels. At one level, Jesus is making sure that his mother will have a place in the world, entrusting her to the care of his friend. But at another level, something quite different is happening—a purpose, a secret, a truth: Jesus is entrusting the Church to Mary, and Mary is accepting her role in the mystery of salvation.
 
I think some words of Mark Strand in an interview can help us read this poem. Strand said: “I’m not absolutely sure what it is that I’m saying. I’m just willing to let it be. Because if I were absolutely sure of whatever it was that I said in my poems, if I were sure, and could verify it and check it out and feel, yes, I’ve said what I intended…. I think the poem would be, finally, a reducible item. It’s this ‘beyondness,’ that depth that you reach in a poem, that keeps you returning to it…. It’s really that place which is unreachable, or mysterious, at which the poem becomes ours, finally, becomes the possession of the reader…. We come into possession of a mystery.”
 
In this poem, the Gospel writer is like the poet, whose words have meaning beyond what he can explain. Reading the Gospels is different from any other kind of reading. Jesus is not in the past; Jesus is risen, and we are in relationship with him. Thus the story we read is our story. When we read the Gospel—to quote Mark Strand—“we come into possession of a mystery.”