And a Good Friday Was Had By All

You men there, keep those women back
and God Almighty he laid down
on the crossed timber and Old Silenus
my offsider looked at me as if to say
nice work for soldiers, your mind’s not your own 

once you sign that dotted line Ave Caesar
and all that malarkey Imperator Rex

well this Nazarene
didn’t make it any easier
really – not like the ones
who kick up a fuss so you can
do your block and take it out on them
                                                            Silenus 

held the spikes steady and I let fly
with the sledge-hammer, not looking
on the downswing trying hard not to hear 

over the women’s wailing the bones give way 

the iron shocking the dumb wood.

Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand – we had a 

drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he wasn’t 

a patch on you

then we hauled on the ropes
and he rose in the hot air
like a diver just leaving the springboard, arms spread 

so it seemed
over the whole damned creation
over the big men who must have had it in for him

and the curious ones who’ll watch anything if it’s free
with only the usual women caring anywhere
and a blind man in tears.

--Bruce Dawe (1930-2020) Australian poet and academic

Scriptural reference: Matthew 27:32-56

Image: Crucifixion from the Rabbula Gospels, an illuminated manuscript completed in 586 CE at the monastery of St. John of Zagba and what is today Syria. This is the earliest crucifixion scene known in a manuscript. The full original image, which also includes a resurrection scene, is 13x10.5 inches.

As explained at Christianiconography.info, 

"As in many early Crucifixions, Jesus wears a liturgical "colobium," not the skimpy perizoma of the thieves. The word above the man with the spear can be transliterated as LOGINOS – that is, the soldier Longinus, whose blindness was cured by the blood that flowed from Jesus' side. On the other side of the cross is the man with the sponge; in front, the soldiers dicing for Jesus' garment. The woman on the left is most likely the Virgin Mary, standing beside St. John. She resembles Mary Magdalene in the lower panel, but is not as slim or erect.

The lower panel presents the Resurrection as told in Matthew 28. In the center we see how "the guards were struck with terror, and became as dead men" at the opening of the tomb (verse 4). The tomb is modeled on the actual Aedicula in Jerusalem. An angel sits on a sarcophagus beside it and tells "Mary Magdalen and the other Mary" that Jesus is risen and they should go and tell the disciples (verses 5-7). On the right Jesus greets the women and they "took hold of his feet, and adored him" (verses 8-10).

The "other Mary" may be the "mother of James" who accompanies Mary Magdalene in Mark 16:1. However, it is just possible that the haloed woman in the lower panel is not Mary Magdalene but Mary the mother of Jesus. The Golden Legend cites two early Christian writers supporting the opinion that it was to his mother that Christ first appeared, and that she was the one who told the disciples (Ryan, I, 222). If that is what the image is asserting, then the "other Mary" would most likely be Mary Magdalene."