The Little Crucifixion
He is so sweet and helpless. He is a little doll
left over, tender, everybody gone. How prettily
the three nails keep him there, aloft,
white and neat and carefully bejewelled
with those small drops of red.
The prickled filament around his head
is delicate as a dark floss. No one will touch him -
nobody can unhook him, limb by jointed limb,
from where he's hanging -
not John, his white hands open, startled as birds,
treading his girlish circle, mouse-soft with his threaded toes.
He purses his small mouth, and his eyes
swell - wonder of wonders, how
this figure, perfect in miniature,
bleached of fingerprints, retains
its luster in the wake of workmanship -
the raw shouts, the reed of vinegar, the tawdry dust
that carpeted the place. The last pale flower, trembling
on the bough after the storm? The gaps between his fingers
long to meet the final, finished body.
Not his mother, who approves it,
sweet in her fog-eyed pride, folding one hand
over the other, under her talc-softened chin.
She nods as if she had made him.
The dawn light dulls her halo
as the day dulls neon. After all, there is a place
for everything.
In the sky, a streak of pink
trembles. The city, drowned in blue,
is rustling awake. Men watch the sky,
angle lances through the pale air. Everybody walks
in wonder, murmurous, slow:
not seeing, still they know.
The sky lightens on their tender faces. The slim
pieces of grass escape the shadows,
dark and green and warm. The skull
that sits before the mound is brown as a nut,
charming as a toy.
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