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# A second poem for Good Friday
- URL: https://joshualore.com/inthemiddleway/a-second-poem-for-good-friday-if-you-had-really/
- Published: 2016-03-25T22:08:35.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-03T04:18:17.000Z
- Author: Joshua Lore
- Tags: Uncategorized, Catholic, christ, christianity, Good Friday, Jesus, Mary, poetry, Rilke, #Migrated-1788408094757, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-09-03 00:01

> If you had really wanted to be strong,  
> you would not have come from a woman’s womb.  
> For messiahs are quarried from mountains  
> where the sturdy and strong comes from stone.  
>  
> Are you not sorry to have despoiled your land  
> by such limitations? I am weak, don’t you see;  
> I only had streams of milk or tears to offer,  
> and you were ever so much more than me.  
>  
> So much ado when your birth to me was announced.  
> You could have been born fierce and wild from the start.  
> If you only needed tigers to tear you to pieces,  
> why did I learn gentleness as an art  
>  
> by which I wove for you a soft, pure gown  
> without even the slightest seam  
> for comfort–: that’s how my life has been,  
> which you now have turned upside down.  
>  
>  

From ‘*The Life of Mary*,’ by Rainer Maria Rilke