The title "Good Friday" clues readers into what this poem will be about: Good Friday is an important date in the Christian calendar that commemorates the death of Jesus Christ. The speaker begins the poem itself by questioning their emotional connection to their Christian faith, and more specifically their (lack of) response to the Crucifixion. This question will take up the entire first stanza.
First, in line 1, the speaker juxtaposes two contrasting metaphors:
Am I a stone, and not a sheep
These are also both allusions to the Bible, and they tell the reader how the speaker sees themselves:
- In Ezekiel 36:22-28, God promises to replace people's "heart[s] of stone" with the "heart[s] of flesh." Similarly, the speaker hopes they can overcome their own numbness.
- Meanwhile, sheep in Christianity represent Christ's faithful followers (the Bible refers to Jesus as the "true shepherd" of humanity). In this context, then, being a metaphorical "sheep" has positive connotations, implying unquestioning commitment to Jesus/God.
Both metaphors in the first line, then, have their roots in the word of God. In a way, this subtly hints at the speaker's devoutness: almost everything they say in the poem has Biblical undertones, suggesting a mind well-versed in the book. At the same time, the juxtaposition between "stone" and "sheep" demonstrates a huge gulf between how the speaker feels and how they want to feel.
The first line uses iambic tetrameter—that is, four iambs (metrical feet with unstressed-stressed pattern, da-DUM):
Am I | a stone, | and not | a sheep,
All eight words are monosyllables, which, together with the iambic rhythm, makes the line sound direct and urgent—as if, perhaps, the speaker's entire existence has been reduced to this one fundamental question.