Easter Sunday

(I'm not personally a practising Christian, but I do appreciate the power of the story and this is an attempt to suggest why it has such resonance.)

How pathetic it seemed, the carpenter’s rebellion,

arrested and left on a windswept morning,

framed in death by the tools of his trade.

How final the reckoning, the so-called Son of God

a distorted carcass, Messiah in carrion.

Never again the electric silence

only broken by his gentle assertion;

no more hope for the whores, thieves and beggars,

surprised to find they still had a way

and again redemption for imperial discipline

hard-holding at bay an impending chaos.

The Emperor’s gone now, failed and forgotten,

a surplus of marble in superfluous ruins

and all his decrees, beliefs and decisions

are punctured to pieces of oblivion detritus.

But we still implore the cross in the morning

worn round our necks like a brave badge of yearning.

The bloodied eyes opened in the Calvary shadows

and powered the sword down to eternal futility.