The Laborious Way

Poem by Brian Hill

Only a man,
stark and stooped,

he walks in the fading light,
his sun already set,

his every step,
a tribulation.

          Were we to turn unburdened
          and carry on in his footsteps

          would the wooden beams
          lean on our shoulders
 
          as heavy as a thunderous
          low-skied morning on Golgotha?

For we are asked,
yes, we are required,
to walk as if that was today;

we are asked
to think, whose are
these steps we follow.

          How do we know pain or abandonment.
          the blood forsaken or the iron in it?

          How do we know the holy moment
          when each of us walks alone?
 
Never in the journey,
nor its bitter end,
where metal cuts so deep…

nor in the lingering,
high above a crowd, aching
for the horizon to take us home…

          Only a man might wonder if godhood
          was an invention of the godless;

          only a man in his last moments
          would know the sky to be his father’s face.

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Brian Hill writes in English and Scots: published online and in print; readings live across Scotland and online; pamphlet - Last Year’s Words, 2019. To view more of his work, please visit him at onepieceaweek.