A sort of footnote to yesterday’s poem.
Who Bears the Blame?
‘Starve, scourge, deride me. I am dumb’ – G.K.Chesterton, The Donkey
On Palm Sunday, Eeyore raises
his voice from the ground and brays
his truth, standard bearer
for the burden bearers,
for those who squat on dust
to dip a burst balloon
into empty honey. Women
who keep silent in the temple
shout hosanna here. The stones
generations have trampled
into the road cry out
to praise a man who kneels to wash
the feet of labourers, who allows
a woman to massage
his cracked feet at a dinner party,
who calls a banker to climb down
and join the picnic. Children
with mangy hair throng round the donkey
at the food bank for a blessing.
They recognise this trudger
who’d walked from Nazareth
to Egypt via Bethlehem where
babies were massacred.
They’ve ridden on its back along
the strand of Galilee where fishermen
hauled in their hopes and bet their nets
on love – the kind that just keeps going,
the kind that lies down in the road
in protest at injustice. The kind that falls
into a pit and sprawls there all Saturday,
waiting for spring, then touches
the untouchable with a name.
Later that week, the donkey, starved,
wanders outside the city wall,
browsing on the rubbish dump.
They blame him for the bones they find;
they flog him, and they string him up,
sickened by his stubborn braying.
If your guilt is so unbearable
you force it onto others,
if you’ve spat at any passing creature
you think must be a parody of life –
the devil’s work – or if you stood aside
as a mob dragged some innocent
to slaughter, or bought the bottled blood they sold
as a miracle cure, or twisted a rope of shame
for someone struggling to belong,
perhaps you’ll stumble on an empty cave and wonder
why the sun still rises after the moon
eclipses it on Friday afternoon.
What can you smell there? Spices? Rotting?
Roast lamb? Spring flowers? Something new?
Chris Fewings