Christ On The Cross
Christ on the cross. The two feet touch the ground.
The three timbers are of an equal height.
Christ is not in the middle. He is the third.
The black beard has sunk down over the breast.
The face is not the face of the aquatints.
It is Hebraic and harsh. I do not see him
but will go on pursuing him until
the last footstep that I take on earth.
The broken body suffers and grows quiet.
The crown of thorns digs painfully into the brow.
The jibes no longer reach him from the rabble
who have looked on his agony so often.
His or another's; it comes to the same thing.
Christ on the cross. Deliriously he thinks
about the kingdom that perhaps awaits him,
he thinks about a woman who wasn't his.
It will not be his lot to see the dogmas,
the Trinity that cannot be construed,
the Gnostics, the cathedrals, Occam's Razor,
the purple vestments, mitres, liturgies,
Guthrum's conversion at sword point, the Inquisition,
the martyrs' blood, the horrible Crusades,
Joan of Arc, the Vatican blessing armies.
He knows that he is not a god but a man
who dies with day. That does not trouble him.
What troubles him is the hard iron spikes.
He is not Roman, he is not Greek. He groans.
He has bequeathed us dazzling metaphors,
also a doctrine of forgiveness, such
as can annul the past. (An Irishman
composed that sentence in a prison cell.)
Making haste, the spirit seeks its end.
It has gotten a little darker. He is dead.
A fly meanders on the quiet flesh.
Now that that man has suffered, what earthly good
will it do me, if I am suffering now?
Préféré par...
Autres oeuvres par Jorge Luis Borges...
