Vox Populi

Tags

Barabbas, Ecce Homo, Herod, Judea, Messiah, Paschal, Passover, Pontius Pilate, Prefecture, Procula, Sanhedrin

A sestina for our times:

 

Pilate stood before the Passover mob.

Besieged, he offered them a Paschal vote:

Barabbas over Jesus was a shock-

insurrectionist over a prophet?

The Governor washed his hands of their choice.

This ‘Messiah’ was no uncouth rebel.

 

The crowd chose Barabbas just to rebel

and, punishing themselves is what the mob

love to do.  They see it as their free choice;

their chance to demonstrate their power; to vote.

They prefer to crucify a prophet:

enjoy giving the powers-that-be a shock.

 

Pilate’s wife had had a nightmarish shock.

She said, I don’t want to usurp; rebel

against you, but I must say that this ‘prophet’-

although he’s stirred up hatred from the mob-

would get from me a Messianic vote,

though, clearly, he is not the High Priest’s choice.

 

She flounced out:  It’s up to you; it’s your choice.

To Pilate his wife’s comments were  a shock,

but, after all, she didn’t have a vote.

He’d never known Procula to rebel.

Let her go out and face a rabid mob…

You wouldn’t need to be a seer, prophet

 

to predict that outcome.  No prophet

is ever successful; his country’s choice

and it will be no different with this mob.

I couldn’t imagine the after-shock

if I released this man.  I’m no rebel.

Ecce homo!  I’ll put it to the vote.

 

The thing to do is with my feet to vote;

sit on the fence; let them judge the ‘Prophet.’

Even Herod said he was no rebel.

Judea would never have been my choice

and, getting the Prefecture, was a shock-

those Sanhedrin just as vile as that mob.

 

Why should I find the people’s choice a shock?

Give the mob an option and let them vote:

rebel will trump prophet any day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Palm Sunday in Salisbury

Tags

Arundells, Babel, Bishop's Stall, Chapter House, Constable, Creme egg, Dom Perignon, Easter, Jobseekers, Julian of Norwich, Living Water, Mammon, Mocha, National Trust, New Sarum, Old Sarum, Palm Sunday, patens, Pontius Pilate, Salisbury, Simnel cake, Ted Heath, University Challenge, Yasser Arafat

A re-blog as it is timely:

I can’t believe that it’s nearly Easter, shivered Carrie.

Quick! let’s go in and bag a table, I said.

Costamuchamoulah cafe was still doing a brisk trade, even on this

grey day.  Amazingly, the smokers were still prepared to sit outside.

We have the routine down to a fine art now: one gets into the queue while

the other nabs a table, much as the disciples snatched a colt.

Yes, Easter’s early this year, I commented, watching a child stuff its face with

a Creme Egg in advance of the Christian calendar.  It’s amazing how such

diminutive creatures can incorporate a whole orb of sickly chocolate fondant

into such a tiny aperture.

I bet they don’t know what Simnel cakes represent, I mused aloud.

What do they stand for? queried Carrie.  Then, seeing my expression, she

added, I’m sure I once knew.

That’s what I say during University Challenge, I replied.

Then I sipped my Mocha, getting a chocolate powder moustache.  You know,

it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow.  Are you going to go to a service? 

Try persuading that lot to get out of bed, she sighed. They used to like to see

the donkey coming into the church, though.  Sometimes they were convinced

that The Dean, giving his dramatised reading, was Pontius Pilate and it scared

them.

Yes, we used to go to Salisbury for the service.  That was when Ted Heath

lived in The Close. In fact..

..you have a poem about it, she smiled.

How did you know?

PALM SUNDAY IN SALISBURY

Polythene wraps New Sarum like an egg.

The sky above The Close is Constable’s.

Cream-robed clergy congregate in cloisters,

bespectacled, brandishing dried gray palms,

under a spire as tall as Babel’s own,

while new choristers mouth All glory, laud

and honour.. without comprehending laud.

The tallest lad hopes that his voice won’t crack.

Girl choristers have not been asked to sing today.

Some miniature Yasser Arafats

in tea-towels and trainers coax an ass

from a spreading cedar into the nave,

where all present pray for its continence.

True blue glass provides a continuo.

Ted Heath’s Jaguar, also blue, is parked

on a reserved space outside Arundells.

What if one should loose its handbrake

and say, The Lord has need of thee this day?

Meanwhile we make intercession for all

unemployed, under and over-employed,

while carefully noting the advertised

champagne breakfast on our service schedule.

Dom Perignon: a foretaste of glory.

The Jobseekers can sip Living Water.

Coffee will be served in the Chapter House

among the exhumed coffin chalices,

patens. The bookshop is doing business

in postcards of Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well. Mammon

hasn’t felt stings from His whip of cords-yet.

The head which indicates the Bishop’s stall

has a triple face of circumspection.

The Dean and his ordained wife wear the same

as they stand on repro medieval tiles,

trying not to worry about their lunch.

In the cloisters a chill wind chafes faces.

A chair is overturned, but no tables.

Although we have received the sign of peace,

our palm crosses seem ineffectual.

We stick one on Ted’s windscreen, just in case

his residential permit cuts no ice

with the flaming Being at the Close gate,

who curiously doesn’t wear a badge,

but bears authority from Old Sarum.

He tends to let the backpackers pass through,

like Christians, still bearing their large burdens,

or as camels accessing a needle.

But Tory Faithful have to wait in queues,

backs turned to the Celestial City,

while Peter checks their National Trust cards

and the very stones cry, Glory! Glory!

Eulogy

Tags

arils, butts, Eulogy, Fortingall Yew, Holinshed, hot cross bun, lychgate, Picts, Pontius Pilate, yew

The Fortingall Yew, photo:Wikipaedia

Of course, I said, Pontius Pilate was thought to have been brought up in

Scotland.

Oh, Candia, you’re always making out that Auld Caledonia was-no, is,

The Promised Land.  How on earth do you justify that last remark?

Holinshed-Raphael, I said.

Who? (Carrie didn’t study Shakespeare in her degree.)

The chap whose Chronicles was a source that Shakespeare drew on.

Oh yeah.  Right. (She’d never heard of him.  Raphael, I mean.)

Well, it has been mooted that Pilate’s father was a high ranking member

of a Roman delegation which was sent to negotiate with the Picts.  He married

a local girl in Perthshire and fathered young Pilate. Then the young family

returned to Rome.

Well, said Carrie.  That’s obviously a load of old rubbish. (She was munching a

hot cross bun.)

What makes you feel you are a better authority than Holinshed?

I felt a little belligerent, as I had denied myself a bun and was irritable

through hypoglycemia.

(Well, that is my story, and I am sticking to it as firmly as Holinshed stuck to

his fanciful proposition.  Okay, okay, I know he was wrong about so much,

but he just liked to pep things up for the Bard. I agree: Macbeth was probably

a New Age stay-at-home father with a fully-developed feminine side to his

character.)

All right, Carrie, I swallowed, why is it a lot of codswallop?

Because I can’t imagine anyone thinking that they could negotiate with a

Pict. Not if you are anything to go by.

Charming, I said.  You deserve another poem, my good friend.  And yes, I will

have a bun after all. With jam. So there!

EULOGY

Pontius Pilate played under your branches

in Fortingall, it’s alleged, two thousand

years ago, before he would wash his hands

of innocence.  Crimson shells of arils

broke out like bloodbeads on a thorned brow

and he trod on golden prickles, so sharp

they pierced his sandals.  Rootstock of saplings

for a future planting, you are much more

than three-in-one.  Funeral corteges

passed through your hollow trunk more easily

than camels through the eye of a needle.

Later young men trimmed your boughs for longbows.

Ancient churchyard trees abutting the butts

united sacred and secular.  In this space,

one rootball bound the dead

of the parish in a communal grave.

Portions of this yew may have been a man

the Governor knew.  Memento mori;

toxic and taxil, your lost heartwood rings

defy establishment of your true age.

Christian evergreen; Druidic icon?

You were a linchpin of society

by the lychgate of a newly planted church.

You may stand here when certainties are gone.

Palm Sunday in Salisbury

Tags

Arundells, Bruckner, Chapter House, Constable, Creme egg, Dom Perignon, Holy week, Julian of Norwich, Mocha, Old Sarum, Palm Sunday, Pontius Pilate, Salisbury, Simnel cake, Ted Heath, Tower of Babel, University Challenge

I can’t believe that it’s nearly Easter, shivered Carrie.

Quick! let’s go in and bag a table, I said.

Costamuchamoulah cafe was still doing a brisk trade, even on this

grey day.  Amazingly, the smokers were still prepared to sit outside.

We have the routine down to a fine art now: one gets into the queue while

the other nabs a table, much as the disciples snatched a colt.

Yes, Easter’s early this year, I commented, watching a child stuff its face with

a Creme Egg in advance of the Christian calendar.  It’s amazing how such

diminutive creatures can incorporate a whole orb of sickly chocolate fondant

into such a tiny aperture.

I bet they don’t know what Simnel cakes represent, I mused aloud.

What do they stand for? queried Carrie.  Then, seeing my expression, she

added, I’m sure I once knew.

That’s what I say during University Challenge, I replied.

Then I sipped my Mocha, getting a chocolate powder moustache.  You know,

it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow.  Are you going to go to a service? 

Try persuading that lot to get out of bed, she sighed. They used to like to see

the donkey coming into the church, though.  Sometimes they were convinced

that The Dean, giving his dramatised reading, was Pontius Pilate and it scared

them.

Yes, we used to go to Salisbury for the service.  That was when Ted Heath

lived in The Close. In fact..

..you have a poem about it, she smiled.

How did you know?

PALM SUNDAY IN SALISBURY

Polythene wraps New Sarum like an egg.

The sky above The Close is Constable’s.

Cream-robed clergy congregate in cloisters,

bespectacled, brandishing dried gray palms,

under a spire as tall as Babel’s own,

while new choristers mouth All glory, laud

and honour.. without comprehending laud.

The tallest lad hopes that his voice won’t crack.

Girl choristers have not been asked to sing today.

Some miniature Yasser Arafats

in tea-towels and trainers coax an ass

from a spreading cedar into the nave,

where all present pray for its continence.

True blue glass provides a continuo.

Ted Heath’s Jaguar, also blue, is parked

on a reserved space outside Arundells.

What if one should loose its handbrake

and say, The Lord has need of thee this day?

Meanwhile we make intercession for all

unemployed, under and over-employed,

while carefully noting the advertised

champagne breakfast on our service schedule.

Dom Perignon: a foretaste of glory.

The Jobseekers can sip Living Water.

Coffee will be served in the Chapter House

among the exhumed coffin chalices,

patens. The bookshop is doing business

in postcards of Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well. Mammon

hasn’t felt stings from His whip of cords-yet.

The head which indicates the Bishop’s stall

has a triple face of circumspection.

The Dean and his ordained wife wear the same

as they stand on repro medieval tiles,

trying not to worry about their lunch.

In the cloisters a chill wind chafes faces.

A chair is overturned, but no tables.

Although we have received the sign of peace,

our palm crosses seem ineffectual.

We stick one on Ted’s windscreen, just in case

his residential permit cuts no ice

with the flaming Being at the Close gate,

who curiously doesn’t wear a badge,

but bears authority from Old Sarum.

He tends to let the backpackers pass through,

like Christians, still bearing their large burdens,

or as camels accessing a needle.

But Tory Faithful have to wait in queues,

backs turned to the Celestial City,

while Peter checks their National Trust cards

and the very stones cry, Glory! Glory!