He touched them, touched them all and He reached out,
Shunned not disease nor odd deformity,
He touched and put contagion’s scourge to route
And empathized with human misery.

He neared, he touched,- a thing so unheard of,-
The leprous wretch and the tubercular,
The most repellent sore He touched with love,
He touched the most repugnant sufferer.

Unheard of touching throbbing virulence,
And nauseating materiality,
He bent and stooped to human indigence,
Touched the most hideous infirmity.

He dwelled and walked amidst the endless tide,
Of human suffering and wretched pain,
He touched the putrid sores and smelled the blight,
Made the disturbed in spirit hale and sane.

Some of the sufferers had long forgot
All sentience for touch and tenderness,
And other outcasts did remember not
The balm of an embrace or a caress.

Disease's scourge and flail is unwelcome,
Except ’mongst those yet more unfortunate-,
He uttered never a proscriptive ban,
Did not recoil, evade nor separate.

Unheard of by the rules societal,
And regulations of the priestly code,
Without reluctance Jesus touched them all
Oh blessed outcasts loved and touched by God!.

© Elizabeth Dandy

Copyright © Elizabeth_Dandy ... [ 2005-04-12 08:53:11]
(Date/Time posted on site)

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