Stones by Kester Brewin

Before plants, before animals, before fish;
after light, but yes, many days before you,
He called us up from the sea.

Hard and strong,
we were the firstborn of all creation,
not you - soft, malleable, pliable, always yielding,
you who were created from our very dust.

We remained silent then.
You inhaled his breath, tried to forget your roots,
trod on us, though you knew our primacy.
We were your quarry;
You dug us out, cut us and piled us up.
We were your weapons;
thrown in anger, from sweating palms,
boiling blood with merciless indignation.

But no more:
He came.

He came, and refused to turn us to bread.
He came, and said only the sinless could hurl us.
He came, and knew that if you,
with your language and art and religion did not,
then we would cry out.

Now we cry out:

He came and you killed him.
The true cornerstone, the foundation,
came and you ground him down and trod him like dust,
back into the earth, forgetting your roots,
and cast him to us, rolled up and sealed
in an opening we had prepared.

For three days we kept silence.
But then cried out:
No! We refused to hold him.

No soldiers had to heave that stone,
nor was it that the earth could not hold him;
simply that it would not.
You buried the creator, and we pushed him back,
this God-man that gave us form and strength.

So speak now, you breath-filled creatures of dust.
Sing now of the miracle of your supple lives,
or we, the stones, will cry more,
as you are lowered to us in your caskets,
and hold you until the day that you do.