“The Testament Of Mary”
By The Light Of The Moon And The Stars

“We held each other and stood back
as he howled out words that I could not catch.
I watched in horror as they held him.
I tried to see his face as he screamed in pain,
and they drove a second nail so that
his two arms were outstretched on the wood.

I went from grief to further grief.
And when the possibility of being
dragged away and choked arose
my first and my last instinct was to flee.

So we made our way through the night on foot
by the light of the moon and the stars
and hid each day where we could.

I wondered out under the sky
which was lit with stars
and I believed for a moment
that soon these stars would cease to glitter,
that the nights of the future would be dark beyond dark,
and that the world itself would undergo a great change,
and then I quickly came to see that the change
would only happen to me
and to the few who knew me.

It would be only us
who would look at the sky at night in the future
and see the darkness before we saw the glitter.
We would see the glittering stars as false and mocking,
or as bewildered themselves by this night as we were,
as left-over things confined to their places,
their shining was nothing more than a sort of pleading.”



“THE TESTAMENT OF MARY” by Colm Toibin ©2012
(Mother Mary)

Excerpt by Tim Gega 2014 (consent pending)