306 - Yeshu of Nazareth

Yeshu of Nazareth
By Stephen Mitchell

1

You came to me when I was nine,
with the sheen that forbidden joys have.
When I asked about you, the rabbi's
face clamped into a cold
smile. Just behind his words
I could sense the fear and repugnance;
something was wrong; I had bungled
into a high-security
area, like sex. No clearance.
You were the noisy skeleton
in our closet, the pile of dust
swept under our soul's rug, the prodigal
son who had stayed abroad
and grown rich and famous selling
bacon. How could I not tiptoe
out of my fathers' house
to meet you on every high mountain
and under every green tree?

2

Much later, the message became clear:
"What I have undergone
to reach the kingdom inside us,
you must undergo too,
and it will be no easier
for you, though I have gone first."

Stephen Mitchell, a writer, poet, and translator, has translated poems of Rilke and from the I Ching. He is the author of The Book of Job (1987), The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry (1989), and Parables and Portraits (1990) from which these two poems are excerpted with the permission of Harper Collins Publishers.

307 - Yeshu of Nazareth

3

Golgotha. Were you unable
to endure one moment longer
the body's agony, the failure,
the impossible desolation
by what you most trusted? And yet
this too had to be lived.
There was no outside heaven
waiting for you. Despair
had to be made your own
since you had, somewhere, willed it,
and yourself had given yourself
that cup
to drink, to the bitter last drop.
You walked into perfect horror
open-eyed, leaving behind
everything. As if you were walking
into the final room
of your own house.