He was always running after the
dust of Galilee
and
its pious announcements and fables
and
the carpenter shaman who spit on the blind
and
threw people into pools to make them walk.
I
was left to clean and raise his children
while
he followed the moon-eyed lepers
and
their craving for smooth skin and prophecy.
A
pox on them all, the seventy-two
and
the twelve who rowed the boat
and
caught his fish for the outdoor picnic show.
There
were whores enough to satisfy his needs
since
his master was clever at sowing
and
reaping the leftover weeds and seed.
Just
as good that I wasn’t the one to catch his disease.
And then the whole lot gets beaten and nailed,
or
maybe just three—not that I cared, or care.
He
came home only once to shake my shoulders
and
shout “He’s not there, he’s not there!”
I
was left to clean and marry off his fry,
to
scrub my fingers to the bone, to cry.
Oh,
it was rich to find he’d run to India,
babbling
to the fakirs and the gurus there,
the
swamis and turbans and the Tantric sex.
Fie,
for all the good it did. They didn’t care.
Years
ago I heard the tale that my bastard mate
was
preaching and got stoned by local folk
when
his sleight-of-hand didn’t lift the yolk.
The
deaf couldn’t hear and the fevers didn’t break.
It
was all a sham, a rolling of the bones
to
take his clothes and the teeth still left
in
a mouth flapping its gums about heaven
and
some kingdom floating in a desert mirage.
I
had to cook and clean and work for pennies.
I
had to prostitute myself before the bread could leaven.
~William Hammett
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