Do you remember those mornings long ago
when Martha used to come to wake you,
shake you if you refused to rise?
Then she’d stand outside your door calling:
Lazarus, come out; there’s work to be done.
Sometimes you’d shut your ears to her,
turn in the bed, wrapping bedclothes
more tightly round your nakedness,
long to be left to enjoy your sleep, safe
from a world of work and war and want.
So when, having passed through sickness,
pain and death you lay at peace in your silent
tomb, relieved that nothing more could reach,
could harm you, was it pleasure or not to hear
your friend’s imperious call, Lazarus come out!