Temple Curtain

By Richard Mather

The temple curtain made of some heavy purple fabric,

with its curious pleats and creases, its threads of silver and gold,

was torn and burned after the soldiers did their worst.

No longer confined in the broken body of the temple,

God’s eternal idea of the curtain unrolled and billowed extensively.

It was an ecstatic unfurling of divine light.

It unfolded over and beyond the Seven Hills of Rome,

beyond the twilight realms of Ra and Isis, far beyond

the moon and sun, and is unfurling still, inclining towards infinity,

so that on the Day of the LORD it drapes

like an immense portière over the transfigured cosmos,

and the gentiles understand that whatever they destroy in Jerusalem

shall be redeemed.