Category: paintings

Chapter 1. (New Revised Standard Edition Anglicised.) 

Lamentation’s answer. 

¹While an encampment that human beings had erected in order to survive their journey away from death was being torn down (because of external decisions), another – longer standing – encampment of human beings who journeyed in search of a better life was deciding its direction. ²The world that could choose was choosing, the world that could not choose was watching and waiting to learn if its future had hope or darkness. ³Beneath the discourse a slight whisper from the hearts of those who themselves couldn’t hear. ⁴Words, very clear and chilling to the ears of those who were attentive: “am I my brother’s keeper?”.

⁵Those who heard it, the same who hold the memory of blood from the shepherd’s head-wound dripping on the rock now dropped by his brother, wept. ⁶They wept alongside the tent pegs that had been left behind when the bulldozers came; ⁷they wept beside the old men, sifting through the rubble of the old city for signs of the lives they were in denial of loosing; ⁸they wept with the mothers of sons who were criminalised, lived under the threat of death and its worse sibling twins – incarceration and slavery, sons who were shot before tasting grey. ⁹They wept as their tears were projected onto the endless feeds as pictures that mocked justice by pointing to guilt that would go unpunished and unchallenged ¹⁰(for those with the power to act, didn’t react – the threat never close enough to warrant lifted hands). ¹¹They wept bitterly, tears bursting the underdeveloped levies and washing away their home: ¹²how were they to call home the place that their stronger brother had claimed for his own – even without birthright?

¹³These were the days when judges were scarce; when prophets were silent and pharisees were loud; when the widows were hungry – portions served to false kings; ¹⁴and the fatherless uncovered – squatting in the shadows of hillside mansions. ¹⁵These were the days when no one noticed the wind – no vanes were erected nor sails raised ¹⁶and none with oars left the harbour and nets were swapped for fig leaves. ¹⁷These were the days when the third crow was unheard, heart unhurt, and stomachs stretched as far as the blood-soaked heaps of coins would allow. ¹⁸No one ventured into the wilderness, by the river where the death that saved awaited: opting rather to skirt the edge of the greens on the journeys from fortresses to fortresses. ¹⁹Those who bore the truth had arisen and headed to Tarshish by land leaving the outcry of the infants – whose blood also stained the sacrificial rocks – to rise. 

²⁰Then spoke the Lord to the old soldier’s son,

“Gather your garments,

take off the sackcloth;

rinse your head and be clean.

²¹Cease from your weeping and rejoice,

for now you know my deeds –

my thoughts in the silence

²²when with feeble knees I stood,

half alive from the lashes

wearing my crown of thorns

and my blood-soaked robes of glory,

²³watching as they chose

to make Barabas their king.

²⁴Come, stand with me in love,

and love from this place beside the tree

till darkness fails and every knee

bows”.

Let him who has ears…