The Healing of the Leper (Poetry by Bob Racine)

We carried nature’s vile secret wrapped up in a cloth.  

Only we knew it was worth more than the coin we begged,
the bunch of us a gaggle of sawed-off, dry-rotted stick people
wishing to become straw.

And yet we had this power – default of human fear.

Through a poisonous eye I looked past those weeds and slopes and pronounced my blunted curse upon my Enemy, as he called heaven to task upon my staved and feculent limbs.

“Make a show of it only to priests,” said he.

But only for a price had I ever kept a secret.

Who now would pay – the penurious priests?  

The rich young rulers with their backhanded charity?

The curious drew near and would have

fingered what moments before they had shunned,

had I not clung to the same scurvy cloth.

Then, as if hell were drying to the bone,

I watched their dazzled eyes dim one by one,

leaving me alone with my Undoer.  

In him I soon found that which I feared most –

the vile, hideous purity of my own soul.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.