Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more.
—Mark 10:48
Heat. Heat and dust of Jericho
And light, light golden and translucent
And endless like all desert light, lasting
Apparently forever until all at once
It is spent.
For him it was only ever spent.
For him the heat came unaccompanied,
Vestigial. Auguring no growth. No green bloom.
In the dark halls of his mind
The sycamore, the balsam, the rose
Were shadow, and scent
And blind woody bark rough to swollen hand.
There was a crowd but he did not know them.
Along the dusty lane the crowds passed always
And always he heard them
In their anxieties and their gossip
And in the heat they would not touch him.
He heard many things, this orphan of Timaeus.
Play of children he would not have,
Clank of pity’s coin, wind over empty roofs.
And now muddled tales of rebels, kings, demons
Set to flight, and other even stranger deeds.
Once he had a father, he remembered.
Once he was a son.
He could not know that for others
The knowing came with the sight.
He knew all at once without seeing,
The way we know our body’s wounds.
His own words amazed him
And in later years, in Jerusalem and beyond
He loved to recount, laughing,
That the first object of his reborn eyes
Would be the face of the wise man, scowling,
Wrinkles assembled, poised for venom,
Then lit up with surprise.
This piece first appeared as a finalist in the Catholic Literary Arts 2023 Sacred Poetry Contest.