the God who died

in the museum hangs

an old Spanish crucifix

or what’s left of one —

a Christ now crossless

frozen in the pose of death

with arms outstretched

thin ribs laid bare

the mounting-spikes of nails

now mere empty holes in hands and feet

for seven hundred years he has slept

seeming somehow not to mind

—

he always looks this way in art

pale and strangely beautiful

and clean — so clean — except

for a neat spear slit in his side

and perhaps a scratch or two from scourging

is it because we cannot take

the horror of what we made him to be?

a curse, a calamity, a scandal

a ragged wound and not a man

maybe we cannot face what

we made God become