Josephs

Josephs, or Womb/Tomb 

(Good Friday 2017)

I.

Let there be. Let it be. Fiat. That one word

That blasts open, both the testaments

From God's mouth and a maiden's, a teenage girl

And her creator, her son - searing, nuclear-blasting

All creation into being and the Almighty into her womb.

Yet what about the others, the ones drowned out

By those two bass-note walls of sound?
That man, for instance - balding, nodding at his lathe,

Waiting for marriage to his teenage-bride, or perhaps

Just a little senior, childhood sweetheart,

Impatient to marry the girl next door.

Imagine him, daggered, staggered, reeling - his bride untrue

Or unhinged, telling him oh-so-calmly of another man's child

Or the offspring of Yahweh, the indivisible. How can this be?

Enough love left to uncouple in silence, to lose her

To rip the seam between them. 

He rubs the gall, the saltwater from his face,

Remembering hers, her face, her 

Tears, and settles on the musty mattress.

He too felt feathers waft his face. He too

Could have said no - no to the muddy trudge 

To the town of his distant diluted Davidic ancestor - 

No to his hand powerlessly gripping hers in the straw

As she heaved that boy into the world - 

No to the backhanded neighbours' whispers, the splinters,

The nappies, the cut knees - no to it all!

But instead he said yes - to the adopted son whose manhood

He would miss, whose origin and meaning were as yet

A thickly-clouded moon to him. Yes. Fiat. His name was Joseph.

II.

Or that other man, a priest and council-member,

Hearing the God-man by a lake, keeping a low profile,

Back of the crowd, like his fellow councillor who had 

Gone torch-lit through the city shadows to question him.

They did not consent but could not prevent

The verdict, the black-cap in that bleary-eyed, 

Oil-lamped courtroom

Yet once the deed was done, that wick snuffed out,

The dead weight prized from his scaffold - then one of them

Could help, could do too little, too late for the King

They could not save, could even face down that 

Fearful jumpy viceroy who had rubber-stamped it all

Yet could not scratch or scrub that error from his mind.

He did all that and yet still more - made room for

Death as that other man had for life. That tomb, new,

The chisel-marks still seen beneath the cloth,

That tomb where he had hoped to rest with Abraham - 

He gave it up, said yes to its housing this strange, 

Broken young teacher instead, his corpse hustled in

Before that last light faded and the sabbath

Candles took its place. He too said yes. 

Fiat. He too was Joseph