Kiss

The red-head with the cat under his seat

has a kiss for the guest-of-honour

later in the garden, with fingers-crossed

and the silver in his purse.

 

He looks up,

the dark aura rings his head;

he does not know

they will call these haloes

in later times

and that others’ will be light.

 

A speech before the twelve

and the insurrectionist,

the table turner, the medicine man,

the preacher of peace and love:

so many sides to a single,

solitary man.

 

“Let these thirty pieces be spread around the world,

bury each one deep, until they are found by demagogues

and spent on making still greater fortunes

which will propel the Philistines to power

and afford them each the price of the four

to bring down the temple columns, its roof

and friezes to bury civilisation

or at least that part of it

not already drowned in blood.”

 

The son of man, the son of god,

the son of a virgin

or a simple, foolish girl;

Nazarene or Bedlamite,

or Zealot or none of these

replies:

 

“It is ordained, foretold,

a kiss is just a kiss

a lie is just a lie,

they will remember this

as time goes by.

I am your fate

as you are mine

Iscariot

do not ask the reason why

ours is but to do and die.”

 

But the birth is more remembered than the death,

there is irony in this, and in the famous proferred gifts,

no use to new-borns or their mothers

not heard of again, perhaps given to others.

As if the myrrh used in the desecrated tomb,

(what else, did he walk out of it alone-

a trick as good as Lazarus?)

could be still efficacious after thirty years?

As if the gold was not spent on bribes

and frittered on a carpenter cuckold’s dreams?

Incense? Frankinsense? Burned in censers

over corpses, during weddings

and bar-mitzvahs?

Gone, gone like the smoke

in the desert wind.

 

“He is a man”, Judas thinks,

“a good man, a remarkable man,

but a man’s a man for all that

as someone must later write,

and I must do what is required,

by duty, by him, by God

if there be any such

fit to wear the name.”

 

And the kiss should be on the mouth

and the spirit perhaps will pass to him

who deserves it quite the least

and he will expend it on the limb

of a cursed and blasted joshua tree.