O cross between the antlers beaming
brighter than the brightest pain
Searing, sun-sunk hour of death, hail!
Strung of suffocation and suffusion
Hunted as the wild stag, white as host-to-tongue
Wild bread, wilder meat, wending through weeds,
Hooves that wound us, hooves pursue us,
Panting we are, seeking the elusive Christ
The incarnate, living eve, dying dawn,
And all the world has dimmed and brimmed
Wild woodland winters, subtle songs of spring,
O paradox divine, of sweetest flesh and strongest blood,
We are chasing thee, o stag, and running from thee, o hound,
For all the world has spun and spurned
The way that things should be.
We name thee and thou fly, a tangle to the tongue
And brambles grow thick, weaving regal crowns,
Redemption licks honey from the thorns
And milk from stony breasts of earthen toil.
We hear the stag’s death-cry, and we despair
And knowing knees have kissed the ground
As the eyes of life are on us, like the eye of the sun.
If the light goes out, we shall follow it
Into the deep that calls unto deep,
The hunter being hunted, the constant quest
Of finding life in death’s embrace
Or catching light within the tears
Of life’s inner flowing, the timeless chase;
O arrow that rips the scales upon the eyes,
That splits the apple of the heart,
Speed we hunters home!
