"Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man."
~ "Eighth Air Force" (1948) by Randall Jarrell
Men wash their hands, in blood, / as best they can: I find / no fault in this just man.
Even in times of war, / the crisis of Pilate / becomes universal.
No woman or man reads / the trial of Jesus Christ / indifferent to his plight.
Witness the Word of John / as one with the Father / before both space and time.
As these men wash their hands / symbolically in blood, / they become like Pilate.
Serve the body and blood / of Christ as bread and wine, / the people stand in line.
Humans engage in war, / in each bloody conflict, / they destroy transcendence.
These men captured in time, / within a short poem, / by now they are all dead.
Hunters of other men, / flying high in the sky, / untouched by the faces.
Each face they encounter / as they walk down the street / could be someone they kill.
In their exalted state, / above the clouds, beneath / the stars, they unleash death.
Remember the puppy / these wolves in their spare time / play with like little boys?
Hands handle machine guns, / drop payloads from bay doors, / bombs wash their hands in blood.
Angels guard these pilots / in their duty, to kill, / guide them back to their base.
No man is an island, / Donne wrote in a sermon, / to show our connections.
Death removes our shackles / but we wait for our turn / to taste body and blood.
Shackles of prisoners / within the mind of God, / inconceivable light.
Inconceivable worlds, / every single person, / their body and their soul.
No one is forgotten, / since before time began, / since history found ink.
Blood like wine becomes ink / on pages in the mind / of God connecting dots.
Liquid evaporates / into atoms of gas / as the dust of bodies.
On this day in August, / we celebrate the end / of the war with Japan.
On these days in August, / we grieve for the missing, / vaporized into dust.
Dismiss the grievous harm / done by pilots to end / the war for the soldiers.
As they see their own face, / their original face, / stripped clean in the mirror...
See their face as God does, / from all angles as light / reflects off the surface.
Bitter melons taste sweet / to pilots who taste war, / who taste death from above.
Enter into their dreams, / without a clear conscience, / a man writhes in his sleep.
Sleep of the sharpshooter, / she rests in clarity, / in the mind of the Lord.
To conceive of this mind, / is inconceivable, / a mind beyond language.
Tranquility resides / in a mind without thoughts, / without words or ideas.
Humans in chains are bound / by limits, horizons, / categories, concepts.
Each person meditates / on their own in a group, / focused solely on breath.
Yet, words always exist, / surrounded by language, / by the gift of Adam.
Cast out of the splendor / of Eden with his wife / for a pomegranate.
As Eve tasted the fruit, / she could not help but share / with her husband this love.
No one but the serpent / understood the meaning / of the tree of knowledge.
In this one act, they faced / their original face / before language and words.
Forget about dogma, / their original sin, / the inconceivable.
If Adam, created / in the image of God, / was a mere reflection...
No one conceived hardship / more than Eve as mother / to give birth to two boys.
Didymus was a twin, / who died in India, / he doubted Christ was real.
Neither Cain nor Abel / knew of their narrative / deep in the mind of God.
Only Jesus could speak / directly to the Lord, / as he died on the Cross.
Faulting Pilate for crimes, / he washed his hands in wine, / in blood, no, in water.
Abel was no better / than his brother, but Cain / felt the weight of a stone.
Under that weight, he killed / to justify his right / to shine in reflection.
Left with his guilt, his sin, / his crime, the first murder, / he invented prison.
To say that Jesus died / on the Cross for our sins / does not include Pilate?
Inside the mind of God, / interiority / breathes the exterior.
No one in prison thinks / Cain incarcerated / himself as punishment.
To say, Pontius Pilate / walks the earth to this day / until the end of time...
Humanity concerns / humans with compassion, / with empathy, with love.
If the downtrodden rise / only through compassion, / the love of Jesus Christ...
Symbolically, the blood / of Christ, we drink as wine, / we wash our hands in blood.
Jesus conferred with God / at his crucifixion, / he could hear no reply.
Unjust, God's silence washed / his only son in fear / of love unrequited.
Silence flows crimson streams, / we wash our hands in blood, / we cannot help our crimes.
To say Thomas travelled / to India to preach, / to convert the Hindus...
Monsters exist inside / the breath of God. He blows / hot air and we appear.
Ask not where is justice, / whence comes the breath of God, / our lives, our sins, our crimes.
No one can mistake love, / compassion and concern, / and lose themselves in fear.
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