wordsout by godfrey rust
The
sailing of the ark < 35
of 45 >
35
Put
down this bag of words,
coins for a potter's field. Whose
likeness
do they bear? God is diminished
by all our explanations: we have made
Christ
in our own image, scourged him
with the whips of our doctrines, wrapped
his
beaten body in our purple prose,
frozen his agony in window glass
and
made the cross a trinket. In all we know
there is no analogue for Golgotha:
but
for three hours on a Friday afternoon
Jerusalem lay in unearthly darkness
till
on a scaffold the eternal word
hung silent, staring, gape-mouthed, perfectly dead.
potter's field Bought by Judas with his thirty pieces of silver cf Matthew 27:7.
.