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The Misery Of The Old Scholar, Justus
1
Jerusalem has fallen in battle with the world.
All the stones, once standing, have been torn down;
the holy places, once known, are not apparent.
Imperial Hadrian reconstructs from the ruins a Roman city:
to please himself, a temple to Zeus where God's temple stood;
to please his lover, a boy, a temple to Venus
where Christ's holy cross once stood, on Calvary,
the place of the skull now displaced to a temple to Venus, in
Antinuous' name dedicated, to the goddess revealed in the boy.
And I attend by commanded invitation
(protected, with all of mine, by the emperor's obligation)
compelled to witness his absent desecration.
They did not know Golgotha's location,
and none to tell, among us Christians,
much to the emperor's builders expressed frustration.
Where Christ, emptied on the cross, left an empty tomb:
the supreme and holiest of spiritual memory
should not be lost beneath the emperor's pederasty.
2
My granddaughter, Lady Irene---
in wisdom somewhat older than her years (sixteen),
and in beauty much observed, and desired once seen---
rose early at dawn; and, from her bath,
clothed herself in a robe of purple and gold brocade,
and drew upon the line of each leg
silk stockings---black opaques---recently shipped from Cos.
Sandals (polished, smoothed wood, with just a slight heel)
she wore only for the path strewn with rubble---
she being, most usually, disdainful of shoes
(but not, as you guessed, of her many silk stockings).
She gathered, from the grass beside her tent,
a few of several wildflowers, for a small bouquet
(here where only the heartiest survived the devastation).
And with her boy slave, whom she calls Cherished
(and him the descendant of slaves African and Britannic;
but Paul said, In Christ are neither slave nor free),
in devotion to her somewhat older than his years (seventeen),
she went---before I could detain her or object
(as if anyone can detain her or object)---
to offer her bouquet where the cross once stood.
And Cherished with her---bare from the waist up,
his torso and limbs in perfect dimension
glistening copper in the morning sun---
walked beside her barefoot and unafraid.
The guards, bored at duty, casually parted for them:
"The granddaughter of that miserable old scholar, Justus,"
their ennui briefly enflamed by coupled adolescent beauty;
then, not long pausing, roused the engineers and surveyors,
who watched the Lady Irene and her boy-slave Cherished,
making their way among and around the rubble,
over toward, a hill, a hill somewhat far away.
And there, kicking off her sandals,
at the stripped bare foot of the slope;
and feeling, again, true earth beneath her stockinged feet,
she knelt in prayer with Cherished beside her,
and laid the flowers upward at her arms' length,
and left her shoes where they lay in evidence
(that all might interpret) she stood on holy ground.
3
We left as soon as we were permitted,
days later when construction had begun.
(They tell me the diggers tossed a pair of sandals,
made of polished, smoothed wood, into the foundation trench.)
We stopped for a stay at the inn, outside Joppa.
Lady Irene and Cherished spent each day by the pool,
clad only in their lounging robes
(with hers, of course, sheer, golden stockings,
that she did not mind---there wading---to wet in the water).
And I, relieved of my misery,
and revived in spirit by holiness not desecrated,
thought back to the place of the skull we had seen
just before we arrived at Jerusalem's ruins:
a little ridge---when faced, like the face of a skull, I mean;
noticed first by Cherished and Lady Irene,
nowhere near, now, the site of the emperor's rude erection---
because of my granddaughter's sense of humor and direction.
Starward
[jlc]
