Propitiation

Who knows how deep the Cross
Save he who hung and died?
Who knows how deep the deep
Save he who into deep’s great depths
Descended?
Who knows how deep the Cross
Save he who let his life-blood flow,
Save he whose mystery is veiled?

Deep, deep; deep in the depths
The darkest wrath of God; its tide
Flowed on, flowed under, through,
Flowed over him, the deepest depth
That none can depth, save Christ,
Who went the deepest depth full down
To reach the other side
Of depthless holiness.
 
So deep the wrath: so deep, so deep,
Full down as God’s deep holiness.

Tide after tide; tide over tide;
Tide upon tide flowed over him;
The burning of the holiness, the wrath
That grips the sin upon him laid,
And holds and shears a burning swathe
Across the alien lonely waste
Of dark pollution;
Bears on it from the endless holy love,
Giving no breath for foulness dark to live
But bears it down to death,
To changeless death, the endless death,
The full annihilation.

Deep down to deep, to depths of death,
And reconciliation.

From The Spirit of All Things, by Geoffrey Bingham, pp. 64-65