Caiaphas Poem by Frank Avon

He was a king uncrowned
and he knew it -
we all knew it -
back in those early days.
He strutted down the hall
expecting ovations
on all sides,
flinging his banner,
letting his eminence swing.

His was the torso
of the David of Michelangelo,
the hands, the limbs,
the visage, the locks,
his complacency,
his insouciance,
his hauteur.

Oh, he had his Jonathan,
loyal but limited,
unsophisticated, never to be urbane,
whose sister Michal,
fresh but frivolous,
(it seemed natural as a man)
he assumed as his own:
no one was surprised,
it was to be expected:
marriage was de rigueur
in those days.

He would insist
he was a living myth:
the strength of a Hercules,
the speed of a Mercury,
the endurance of an Atlas,
the appearance of an Apollo,
the appeal of an Eros,
with the subtlety of Ulysses.

But all this was incidental.
It was his voice
on which he prided himself most:
the Hebrew tongue
of the Davidic psalmistry,
the soaring visions
of the prophetic Isaiah,
the rough diatribes of Amos,
the erotic song of Solomon,
his witty adages,
the weary wisdom of Ecclesiastes,
the dazzling visions of Daniel.

It was the Pauline Greek
addressing a throng in Athens,
penning confidential epistles
to the concupiscent Corinthians,
out-arguing Romans,
consolidating Thessalonica,
subjugating ecclesia
in Galatia, Ephesus, Colossae,
self-assuredly mentoring
the young Titus, the young Timothy.
It was those down-to-earth
pilgrimages of the Greek physician
following along with
a self-proclaimed Apostolate,
savaged by the seas.
It was Johannine terseness,
its plainness yet elegance,
the chronicles of Galilee,
the simple pastoral parables,
the rabbinic discourses,
remembrances of the last days;
it was the simple missives,
the soaring Apocalypse
and the ultimate peace
of a New Jerusalem.
It was all of these
in their original dialects,
carefully parsing the syntax,
carefully assembling the sources,
carefully calculating the rhetoric.

These were his tongues;
he cherished their intricacies.

So, as king, he was uncrowned.
Though he expected adulation,
he was ultimately unwilling to court it.
With disdain for the commoners,
he commanded no foot soldiers,
initiated no legionnaires,
celebrated no invasions,
repelled no occupations,
presided over no ceremonials,
only imagined these glories,
dancing nude at the head of the parade,
flinging his banner,
his eminence swinging,
with crowds at his feet,
with women clinging to him,
trailing clouds of exultation.

All this only imagined.

Instead of such adulation
he settled for veneration,
silent and solemn,
among those astute enough
to recognize his versatility.
With his facility in language,
the eloquence of his tongue,
he became a chief among
the scribes and Pharisees.
He abandoned his synagogue,
in disdain for its rigidity,
migrated from Old Zion
to a temple of the Philistines,
demanded respect for the abstruse,
for the elegant minutiae
of the Ancients and the Moderns,

found among the minor multitudes
with which he surrounded himself,
devotees and subordinates,
a voluptuous Bathsheba,
her body and mind
near a match for his own.
So he sent Michal packing
back to her homeland,
the refuge of the homeless.

He had reached the pinnacle.
Did he dare cast himself down?
Or could he build a cathedral
more luxurious, more resplendent?
But no, it was not to be.
The king uncrowned,
the high priest with no rituals,
never elevated to a full professorate,
at last he was ageing, relentless
in defending his tenets,
in interpreting his intricacies,
more and more abstruse, less
and less comprehensible.
Never mind the masses;
never mind syntactic ambiguity,
never mind rhetorical splendors.
Quite simply an emeritus.

He was no Adonijah;
he was no Absalom, Absalom,
he was no Solomon,
his not the harems,
his not the judiciary,
his not the opulence,
his not the palace,
his not the Temple.
His but the name,
the king uncrowned,
the priest unmitred,
the progenitor unheralded.

His but the coterie
of a few of the enlightened
and the ageing Bathsheba,
and the remembrance (as they say)
of things past, of things imagined:
the eminence, the adulation,
the assurance, the veneration.

If he had to live his life again,
he would cast himself down
in a public display of his prowess,
sprout wings, dance in the air,
rule the then-known world
with the sword of his word.
If he had his life to live again

he would live up to the rock
of his name, a Grecian Cephas;
he would have himself anointed:
an Anointed One, he would be

but it is not be be.
He will live on -
his tedious manuscripts,
his cautious translations,
his bold inscriptions unwritten -
in the dust, the holy dust,
of his archives.
Not marble,
his torso, his eminence.
Not a king among kings.
Dust to dust.
Just dust.

When he spoke aloud
the Tetragrammaton,
a Watchtower Society
ennobled his voice
as their Supreme Agon.
He was incensed.
Not his name.
Not The Name.
No longer inerrant.
His rebuttal
unread,
unheralded.

One among the many.
Once among the kingly.