The Massacre of the Innocents by Rusten Harris

Alone and in the darkest
Of the galleria’s chambers
Benefial’s “The Massacre of the Innocents”
Hangs

Set apart from the well lit halls
The painting:
a darkness within a darkness
Too familiar

I did not know if the subject was
Pharaoh’s edict to slay
the Hebrew lads
Or
Herod’s desire to keep his crown
By slaughtering his own people
Two and under
History repeats itself
The victim’s turn to oppress

Never before had a painting
Brought me to tears
The brave women’s faces
The arm outstretched
The men bearing daggers
A mound of violence
meek protection
Bodies and rage

In the bottom left of the frame
Cast aside
Two boys lay
One pierced in his side

“In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping,
and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
and would not be comforted,
because they are not.”

Out of Egypt I have called my son
And into Egypt my son must go
My son the second Moses
And Israel the second Egypt

The king of peace born
Amidst those who worship power
And offer sacrifice of violent sacraments
Even now

The king of peace
saved in infancy
from a viceroy’s wrath
Later saves the many
By not being spared
And tearing down
the idols of power
By being torn himself

In December
my memory returns
Come, king of peace
To the blood drenched land
Visit your vineyard and establish what
your right hand has planted
A tree whose leaves
are for the healing of the nations

The rest of the poems from Rusten Harris’s Advent series on Moss Kingdom:
Incarnation, Christmas Eve, Kings, Some Kind of Glory, Chains, Gifts, Quotidian Couple, A Thousand Lights, Eve & Mary, Treasured Up, Christmas, Winter Staves, The Glorias, Cherubim, Joseph, Strange Redeemer, Womb, Magi, Temple Trough, Advent, Lord’s Day, Far as the Curse is Found, Jubilee, The Massacre of the Innocents, Liturgical Time

Other Advent poems on Moss Kingdom:

December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice, Of Edmund and Aslan, Tiptoe Hope, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats