It Was Him
after the gospel of john 5
The Pool
And then he left left me there on feeble legs
shaking like a newborn colt, muscles wasted over thirty-eight years,
standing by lightning not effort
Pick up your mat!
then he left
the other decrepit, lost, lame, losers are all looking at me
Astounded.
WTF! he just walks off and I wobbly
look back at the crippled others and there is a moment—
the ocean sucked back before a tsunami strikes;
the suitor’s question hanging in the air—
that we all stare blankly:
a guttural choke; someone weeps; a cry—
of joy or anguish I cannot say—and before the storm breaks
I run fast
on these new legs.
******
The Field
New, new, the world is shiny, all being shouts, I am so tall I catch fistfuls of clouds and stuff them in my mouth, I sky-dive down the long length of my ribs and my feet are as steady as the horizontal earth. I tilt my head up and the sun is my eye, is my sister, is a needle in the centre of my forehead. The sky is a blue veil dropped by Gabriel and held up by children’s laughter. I can hear the small scuttle of ants storing food for winter, the skin of berries splitting along fine veined lines. I smell the murmur of cats on Solomon’s golden cushions, pebbles scribble nonsense onto the underside of my feet. Here here, I stamp, I am here, and my alien legs know a dance that is not mine.
******
The Town Square
Sanhedrin surround me like hungry ravens: Who was he? What happened? Why you?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
******
The Temple
I am burnt by the sun.
I must get out of the light,
I flee to the temple,
surely there will be a pocket of shadow in which I can rest.
I sit against the wall, the stones are as cool as my ancestors’ bones.
He finds me.
He sits at my side: I am bewitched by a beautiful maiden,
my limbs languid and soaked in wine. He takes my hand and kisses it,
sin no more, lest worse things befall you
and from my chest a mighty river breaks and tears and urine,
he rises and leaves again I am bereft, soiled, rain is in my mind,
hail stones burn my skin, my face is glossy with sweat
I find three Sanhedrin, I am choking, it was him,
I tell them, pointing. It was him.
Watch! The world will catch fire.