Let me be an alabaster jar

Love poems for Lent

Photo accompanies a blogpost by Alex Rattee at eaforchristians.org. Photographer not identified.

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Once upon a time, many years ago, a poet went to church during Lent and listened again to a story she had heard many times before. After church she thought about the story while she waited to catch the bus, and lines of poetry started dancing through her mind. By the time the bus pulled up, she knew they were lines from two different poems about the same story. When she got home, she wrote the poems down.

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THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY / I                               2001
(Mark 14:3-9)


If I cannot be the woman who,
crazy with love and courage, tiptoed invisible
behind that table of hungry, unseeing men,
found him whom her soul loved, whose eyes alone
welcomed her, and as if he lay
alone before her in a wedding chamber
or a grave, washed him with extravagance
as pure as passion,
as useless as death;

if I cannot be the ointment,
blessed astringent, green preserver,
bright rain and moist dark earth distilled
by sun into a leaf, by mortal hands
into sweet balm, to sweeten mortal body’s 
journey back to dust;

then let me be an alabaster jar,
a kitchen commonplace made fragile
by its foolish substance, made hollow
for no reason but to contain a gift more precious
and more foolish than itself; the moment
of being broken its own and only
gift, its act of grace.

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THE ANOINTING AT BETHANY / II                           2001
(Mark 14: 3-9)


Here’s what I want to know about the woman
who broke the alabaster jar, poured out
a riverlet of perfume on his head, drowning
the supper smells, the supper conversation:
where in God’s name did she or did her family get
three hundred coins, a Bethany-sized fortune,
to spend on precious oils? And why on earth? Was it
some of her marriage-portion, maybe, saved
to sweeten her limbs like the bride in Solomon’s song
after a wedding feast she never tasted? Or was it left
unused after the day her father’s wizened body
was laid to earth, or her young son’s — some frail small corpse
whose small anointing left her with an empty heart
and a full jar? How long had it waited, half-hidden
behind clay pots of everyday, how did she know
today of every day to reach it down
and break it open, how did she know whose head
to bless with such a crazy flood of love?

The poor you have always with you; some fool is always pouring
a life’s treasure over the head of some god, and then
the god dies, and another fool is poor. What I want
to know is: what was left for her, poor foolish woman,
after the jar was broken, perfume poured out,
after he said “beautiful” and “remembered,” and disappeared
to do what he would do next? How often, after, 
groping among clay pots of everyday,
did she reach for the treasure that was gone?
Its absence, his, the promise of a mention
in someone’s half-believed tale, was that
what she had left? Or did the scent
stay on her skin through the washings of everyday,
cling to the hands that had stroked the precious oil
through his hair, across his forehead, between
his own strong fingers, twined willingly with hers,
blessing returned for blessing? How poor are you,
your treasure spent forever, if you meant
to pour it out as surely as your god
meant to receive it, if the meaning is the gift?

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