Dyssomnia on the Cross

Today, done up like a kipper,
forgiveness belongs elsewhere.

From his vantage point
he sees a range of yellow hills -

the vistas of lost childhood -
the city walls and scrubland beyond.

It was there he first lay in blissful
union beneath a leafy pale-skinned tree.

It was there his mind ripped
itself asunder, unheralded, inspired,

blasting aside pain and
injustice like a desert storm,

shocking in the forcefulness
of its nature. It was there he cried.

He cried for the lost, for the shameful,
for the folk who would come-to-harm.

He cried for his Father who had
forsaken him once and who now forsakes him still.

If only he could commit himself
to a deep, satisfying, prodigious sleep,

conduct his spirit to find comfort
on the breeze, find solace in the giddy

perfume of his mother's hair...
"Father! Children stone me. Dogs snap

my ankles. Grim-faced soldiers chew the cud
with tired, half-forgotten eyes."

He is a pugilist, a priarist, whose
flesh has been seared, whose bones

will barely linger. Like end-of-the-pier
dogwood, from the agony of his patibulum,

he sings a final cantata. It rains. The sky
grows ever dark. The crowd takes flight and the

last cur hound scarpers. A twist of the lance,
an execration to send him on his way...

Sleep will come.