PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

After Matthew 2.

I realize that, in his poem "Journey Of The Magi," T. S. Eliot also mentions crosses.  Given the Roman and Herodian reliance upon crucifixion, and Golgotha's designation as a place of execution, presumably crosses (occupied or empty) would be seen on the ridge at all times.  For that reason, I mentioned them; and not to either allude to, or plagiarize from, Eliot's great poem.

 Inspired by Luke 23:39-43

In the late Spring of 1991, while visiting briefly in Cleveland, Ohio, I first considered the hypothesis that the site of Calvary, or Golgotha, as determined by the Empress Helena (and now preserved within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher) might be incorrect because Helena relied upon the location of the temple of Venus, built two centuries prior by the Emperor Hadrian, with the deliberate purpose of desecrating the place of Christ's crucifixion.  Helena, being the first amateur archaeologist in recorded history, did not question the data that Hadrian's builders considered in selecting the location.  Jerusalem, torn to the ground after long siege, must have lacked all but major landmarks; and, in Hadrian's time, Christianity, still very much a condemned faith held by the despised classes, had not established public recognition of its sacred sites.  With the city being smashed to broken stone, at Hadrian's order, the holiest site of a yet small and detested faith must not have been easy to discover.  And, since the 19th century, Gordon's Calvary presents a more plausible candidacy for the true location of Supreme Event that secured the Salvation of all real Christians.  To the best of my knowledge, we cannot prove that Helena's research considered the possibility that, two centuries prior, Hadrian's builders had been misled, either deliberately or by random circumstance.

The poem, as it is now, was actually inspired today by a reading of Wallace Stevens' poem, "From The Misery Of Don Joost," and I have tried to allude to the eponymous hero's name in the title of my poem.  Lady Irene and Cherished are based upon two actual people with whom I am, only slightly, acquainted; and to the best of my knowledge, they are not lovers (although, given the mutual compliment of their beauty, they should be).

I ask the reader's indulgence for the shameless puns and word-play.

The poem was first published in Poets At Work (Jessee Poet, editor), in the March/April 2001 issue (no volume or issue # given), p. 18.  It also appears on the great scholarly website, Casebook Jack The Ripper; and, there, it was my first poem published on the internet, and the first of my historical hypotheses.  Therefore, it is included in the group that I consider my most important poems; or the poems for which I would like to be remembered.