The Watcher – Revisited

I spend my life plying my trade
up and down this ancient land.
A land with a deep and long history.
Many times have I visited this Holy City,
but this time it was different.
So different.

A city that should have been full of joy
and rejoicing was instead tense.
Jumpy soldiers on every street corner
with red, tired eyes and minds
compounded the sense of a city that
was no longer at ease with itself.

How things had changed so radically over a few days.

Then a cry went up and the menacing crowd
gravitated to the road leading out to the city gate.
Out to the place no man ever wanted to go.

As a stranger, an outsider, I had watched
this story within a story unfold.
A man who was used to having his
chosen men around him had to watch
as one-by-one they abandoned him
and melted away into the night.

Even the one who was the most strident,
so firm, so strong, so quick to act, had crumbled at
the innocent question of a young maid.
A question that allowed the darkness to envelope him
and made even him disappear too.

And so, the man who had only ever spoken
and shown love was conspired against.
Vested interests, fearful that their earthly power
was about to be usurped closed ranks.
They plotted and found a way to rid themselves
of their problem without any blood on their hands.
Without a blemish on their reputation.
They could blame others who did their bidding.

Now I see him again.
Almost unrecognisable, a beaten and blood-stained man
stumbling as he is forced to carry the means of his
own impending death past the mocking crowd.

The very same crowd that only a few short days before
had welcomed him into the city with a victory parade of
palm branches and adulation.
How easily that has been forgotten and discarded.

The same crowd that had welcomed him with
open arms and joy now reject him.
They throw their words of shattered dreams as insults.

Mocked by a crown of thorns that actively ridicule
his claims for himself, he stumbles, shuffles
and finally falls to the ground.
But it does not end here.

An innocent witness is dragged in to
become a key player and the macabre
procession continues to its inexorable final end.

The harsh clang of metal on nails
announces the start of execution.
But even this will not be quick.

With a wooden sign they mock a dying man.
He was a King, but not as they thought.
Understood.
Expected.

Insults propelled by shattered dreams mix
in with the sobs of a mother for her son.
The one who saw mysteries evolve when
the tiny baby was born now fears all is lost.

The tears of the created meet the earth.

Eventually the inevitable happens and death
comes to welcome he who spoke of life eternal.
He finished it though.
Not with a roar of defiance,
but with the half-whisper of a statement of fact.
A statement made to all the heavens, principalities and powers.

The Light.
The Word.
The Hope.
The Way.
The Truth.
The Life.
Had been extinguished.
Or so they thought.

Over this mockery of justice, the sun can no
longer look and so turns its gaze away.

The resulting darkness in the sky reflects what
was in so many hearts that day.
Even the earth could contain itself no longer
and trembled as it cried for its creator.

But even in the moment when the darkest
powers thought they had prevailed and
rushed in to grasp at a victory that was
not theirs, there was still hope.

Even in this darkest of hours on the darkest
of days hearts were turned and acknowledged
“Truly this man was the Son of God”.
Thereby they walked, willingly, into a new definition of life.
Replacing the authority of man with the authority of another.

They thought this small revolt would
burn itself out in a few months.
That the memory of the itinerant carpenter
and his rag-tag band of uneducated fisherman,
outcasts, women, the despised and dispossessed would soon
be consigned to the tomb along with its leader.
Would become a mere footnote in history, easily forgotten.

How wrong they were.
Something much more eternal had been ignited.

Is this the end of the story for me?
This itinerant trader, a stranger in so many countries
and cities, found himself a new home when the
veil that stood as a barrier between the world of
Man and the Heavens was torn asunder.

I heard its whispered invitation and entered in.
And so the world is changed by a series of
unexpected one-on-one rendezvous encounters.
Darkness is pushed back one changed life at a time.

---

I seldom revisit a poem I have written in the past so it came as a surprise when I felt prompted to revisit this poem that I wrote many years ago.

Rather than simply edit the original I decided to write a new version of it from scratch. I knew the subject matter well so just decided to treat it like any other new poem. I often like to write my “micro-stories” from an unexpected point of view and so it is with this poem.

This is a well-known subject and story but I hope that this allows you to see it afresh.