The Tomb

A pleasant garden bloomed below the hill
Beyond the temple at Jerusalem.
Contrasting with the cross-trees, gaunt and still,
Time’s ghoulish archetype of Yad vaShem.
Exsanguinated, lifeless on the stone,
God’s verdict and His sentence reinforced,
The Irreproachable lay pale and prone,
Reproached in epicentral holocaust.
Detained at its meridian, the gloom
To third degree eclipsed the noonday sun.
Three execution stakes displayed the doom
Of man, our Substitute’s the central one –
There hung a redolence of precious spice
Crushed in that place of awful sacrifice.

poem by Peter Eliastam
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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