John Isitt
The Tenth Station
Jesus Is Stripped And Drenched With Gall
The windows are shuttered now, in Bethlehem;
a dry wind unravels the still of the attics
where light is thin as embalmed shadow.
The lustre of the farthing candle indoors
diffused through a hundred holes,
splinters in puddles shaped by passing hooves;
the beggar in the door hopes for much and prays.
When day begins again (a massive turning of the screw)
Soldiers will return, unbathed and smelling of drink,
to sing and topple in the streets.
It will be the same in a thousand years.
These two poems by John Isitt are from a sequence on the stations of the cross called Mary’s Song, published, together with a sequence in Welsh called Cymydog Heddwch, by Oxbridge Artists and Writers in a limited edition of 200 copies. John Wain writes in a prefatory note about the poems in Mary’s Song, “The thoughts and images in them are those that arise in the writer’s mind on contemplating the Stations of the Cross in their due order.”
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