Emmarie Marasigan

They came to a place called Golgotha,

which means the Place of the Skull.

Matthew 27:33

Mid-afternoon, a half-moon appears

In the east. It was on a Friday, this hour.

A lance below the breast confirmed the end

Of the man who declared, I am the light … 

Death in the Afternoon 

They have suddenly stopped moving,

All the olive leaves. Around the thorn trees

The coarse winds have ceased, and nowhere

Are the sharp-edged shadows of three o’clock.

Heaven has changed to the color of soot,

Confusing time, overturning the real, as though

A sorrowful mystery is reversing everything and

Gloom is a cloak cast from underneath, from earth.

It’s because of the happening at the Place of the Skull,

The one foretold, a penultimate truth: The man

Is dead. On the third day, after the Sabbath,

Be ready to understand what is written.

You know it happened not because He

Predicted it and so things moved quickly

Across infinity to be dead at three o’clock.

It was because you sank, likely entangled

In the cat-o’-nine-tails in your head,

And the thorn wreath, the cross, and

The boat nails. Were you petrified,

Simon, that in your case, if it were you,

Everything would end at that, because

Unlike Him you are merely human?

Thrice you were asked and thrice you

Wished you could hide and disappear

Like the believers who were on the mount

And the multitudes who were convinced

That He was earth, water, air and heaven —

You looked around and they were nowhere.

How should you have replied, Simon?

Should you have declared: Yes, I am

With Him, He is the one light I follow,

The loved and loving Master who has

Made me walk on water and made me

A fisher of men; I will go up to the altar,

Open my flesh and offer my blood —

I shall take His place and His passion

And so myself become like God?

You thrashed about like a fish newly caught

In a net of panic and dim haze. You fought

And tried to cut it; you groped and found

Inside you neither blade nor heart nor depth.

Even His words puzzled and mystified you,

Uttered softly, a prayer so pained and all too

Human: “Take this cup away from me.”

All things turned into a sunless desert,

And like a chicken terrified you thrice

Cackled a confused and cowardly denial.

But Simon, you had every reason

To be afraid. You're no divine temple,

You will not, at the third sunrise, be rebuilt,

The sea will not, by just your will, hold you up

On your feet, and its winds, its horrendous winds

Will heed no command from you.

Simon, you are a rock broken,

A mortal mass of fragments, and the truth

Facing you, whole and deathless, is the knowledge

That the choice was yours to make, yours alone,

And that you will forever be just a man.

And he went out, and wept bitterly.

And he sent two of his disciples, and said to them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the householder, `The Teacher says …’”

Mark 14:13-14

The wells look alike around Jerusalem, it occurred to him. This is the oldest. That’s what the old folks say. As a young man I asked one of them how certain he was, and he pointed at the sky.

Many days the sky mirrors the desert or the lake; at night it can look like the bottom of a very big well. An endless river could be running underneath that well, another elder said. I didn’t understand at the time.

Many afternoons I sit around here, watching people and things. Passing shadows, mostly. And listening to people spilling words, he mused. The things that matter take longer than an afternoon, an olive picker said. But most times the words were also shadows, or moths in uncertain space.

This hour we are shepherds gathering our flocks, said a shopkeeper after closing up for the day, and a lad walked by with a staff. That boy’s father always passed here at dusk. Nothing ever gets different, a sack maker said.

Yet there was that Thursday afternoon, during the Passover.

A house servant, a widow, was having difficulty at the well, so I took her pail and jar, and filled them up for her. It was her son that fetched water, she said, but she had sent him for some wine because her master was having visitors for supper. A teacher was coming, she said, with twelve others. He glimpsed at the sky, it was starting to get dark, and he heard without listening.

The widow’s words were turning into moths when she tapped his arm. Be kind a little bit more and take this jar to my master’s house for me, please, I must hurry with this pail to prepare the large upper room and the long table.

There where I was walking I saw two men arrive, they saw me and I nodded, I carried the jar of water and they followed. There were no words. I did not know and yet I knew—the teacher had sent them.

There was a kind of quiet and there was not, there was a kind of brightness and there was not. Through the desert, the lake and the sky it came and it did not. It was infinity passing through and it was not.

And He said, "Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is near ... ’”

                                                                                    Matthew 26:18

I

When Grandmother said, I cannot hear the twilight anymore, Father thought to move her to the large upper room.

Wide walls, two windows, a wooden post at the center; Father sometimes slept there in a narrow bed, by a stone corner for a fire, seldom used; in the square space, Aaron once circled like a butterfly that had flown in, with arms for wings, I seated on the floor, wanting to do the same.

Grandmother slept by the door of the pantry. Liked listening to the grains in the bins, the lentils in the bowls, the water and wine in jars, she said.

We should listen to soundless things, she often said. The last time, we were at the patio, I by the doorway watching Aaron chasing pigeons under the sycamore, branches leaning, crown spread wide. There are not enough sounds for all the mysteries, she said.

A gift your grandmother has, Father tried to explain to Aaron and me.

Much affection, and silent; much sand and dust on his feet.

II

Tried to catch a pigeon once, I couldn’t; in Galilee we cheered, laughed loud when Aaron caught a fish, the day bright. Boys’ hearts that listen are heir to heaven, Grandmother said to the two of us.

Things look very different up here, Aaron said, perched on a branch of the sycamore, I seated on a big root, the three of us looking skyward. It’s what birds see, Grandmother said, it’s what angels see. Look there, she pointed to connecting clouds, clouds are like secrets before secrets are known. When it rains, there are rivers and wells everywhere.

III

When Grandmother said she could hear a lamb coming from the field, Father said it was better for her to rest.

Birthplace

Of a stream

House of

Wounds

Airless long night, its spaces hollow, the house too empty, Aaron climbing the post in the upper room, was told to be careful, two servants outside saying to themselves it would be time soon, by the door I hearing.

Before or after midnight, mute the large room, the two small windows, the door, the stairs; in the pantry, mute the wheat, barley, millet and raisins, mute the jars, mute the water; out in the lightless patio, soundless the sycamore.

IV

Then Aaron went. Aaron. After Grandmother. Suddenly.

Hollow. Hollow my head. Blank. No breath.

Childhood became an absent window. Leaves died. Birds departed the sycamore.

In the lake the fish went absent, boats returned empty. The shore lay like a place without memory.

Understanding came slow.

V

Sometimes people have to be like houses, Father said, maybe trying, hoping, to explain his days. We need walls, our windows we sometimes have to keep shut.

Those are fine branches, he said out in the patio on another night.

The coming and going of things, that’s outside our making. Sometimes some of us are able to flow better than others. Some of us are fortunate, a few are blessed.

The farewell I understood very much later.

VI

We will rent this house out, I told the servants. We will live away from here.

VII

Mostly sounds of strangers now in the old house, itinerants, transients; I looking in again during the Passover; the pantry a seldom used space, the large upper room a supper room for journeymen who have no one in Jerusalem.

All still lifeless, except around the sycamore, kind with its shade.

VIII

                        His disciples came to him and said, "This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late.”

                                                                                    Mark 6:35

The girl was dead. One of the servants’ boys, normally reticent, came running from the synagogue. They said the little girl was dead, but the teacher, from Nazareth, told them she was not dead but asleep. They laughed and he had them sent out.

And he told the girl to get up, and she did, she started walking. He said to give her food. He told them to tell no one.

IX

Alone on foot to Bethany, Jericho, around Galilee; and then on hillsides and at edges of water with the multitudes, I listened. Words that could heal even the dead. “Blessed are those who mourn.”

X

A Thursday during the Passover, the supper room of the house taken for the evening; the water jar is brought in.

Two men carrying nothing, in a voice that seemed from behind or beyond them, to me: “The Teacher says, ‘My time is near; I am to keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’”

XI

Soundless space as though in a dream; Grandmother, Father behind her, Aaron among leaves of the sycamore; I bowing, bowing deep, wanting to speak, to say hail, to find a prayer to say; silence like rain filling everything, its sound the pure sound of the sky; a big house resurrecting.

XII

Jonah, son, can you hear my voice? I cannot hear the twilight anymore.

Mother, I will ask to have you moved to the big room upstairs so nothing will disturb you.

But there is a lamb somewhere coming from the field.

It is getting late, Mother. Better that you rest.

XIII

Smell of smoke

No spice

Flat on the plate

A piece of bread

Small, plain, ordinary

A cup

XIV

Mother, it is only the boys. Aaron, be careful.

The room, the table, the wood in the fire, the walls, they all breathe.

It is the window curtains being drawn, Mother.

XV

A solitary voice, real, human, divine; Jonah, listen.

XVI

Take, eat; this is my body.

XVII

The words

As written

XVIII

I should rest now. Where is Abigail? I do not see her.

Abigail went a long time ago, Mother.

But she has not left you and the children, Jonah. I often hear her around the house.

Mother, when you do, Mother, tell her the sycamore in the patio, I planted it for her.

A gift your grandmother has, boys, a true blessing. Come and say goodnight now. Aaron, take your brother downstairs. Tell the servants to light the lamps.

XIX

When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Matthew 26:30