“Maundy Thursday, All the World is Still”, Malcolm Guite, 2020

Maundy Thursday, all the world is still

The planes wait, grounded by departure gates

The street is empty and the shopping mall

Deserted. Padlocked, the playground waits

Against the day that children play again

Till then our sad refrain is just refrain.

Maundy Thursday, all the world is still

And Jesus is at supper with his friends

No longer in the upper room, that hall

In Zion where the story starts and ends,

For he descended from it long ago

To find his new friends in the here and now.

Maundy Thursday, all the world is still

And Jesus is at supper with his friends

Our doors are locked for fear, but he has skill

In breaking barriers. With ease he bends

Our prison bars, slips past the sentry post

And joins us as the guest who is our host.

Maundy Thursday All the world is still

But in cramped quarters on the fifteenth floor,

In lonely towers made of glass and steel,

And in the fierce favelas of the poor,

Touching with wounded hands the wounds he tends

Christ Jesus is at supper with his friends.