etymology of gospel (a poem in response to a joke)

by rrim17

In Bible class, standing in front of a blackboard
With the word “GRACE” etched in chalk,
The professor hands out a Greek introduction on John 1
And a suicide joke.
He says he made CNN yesterday for trying to kill himself
By stepping behind a train;
He packages the two together–exegesis and suicide–
As if he’d run out of wrapping paper and couldn’t
Distinguish between these two entities anyway—

The Logos ribboned with the scarlet lives
Of people who step in front of trains; next time,

I’ll ask for a gift receipt to go with.
His words, returnable as I wish they were,
Remind me of the etymology of ‘Gospel.’
Good news, from the Old English gód spel,
Surviving enough broken translations
And modern misuses to make one believe its longevity
Has indeed a certain speck of magic at its core:

“And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
Comprehended it not.”
The darkness lacking the etymological roots
To make sense of such luminescence,
lacking a God who embodied its shadows and burst asunder
Its mortal linguistic framework.
But the Word-Who-Came came in the sunlight of the Son
To shine “GRACE” into the train wreck ideations,
The nighttime temptations, the pyroclastic nightmares.

The Word came and lived–“the embedded Logos”
Who stretched out his arms and
Swallowed death in his body so that,
When darkness can’t comprehend the light,
the Light already comprehended the darkness.