These boughs that have failed me (Robinson Jeffers)

   An excerpt from Robinson Jeffers' poetic adaptation of this past Sunday's Gospel text from Luke, set in the context, interestingly, of a dialogue with Judas during Christ's Passion.  Jesus speaks of his dreams, but Judas seems to be very caught up in the tangible, unable to see that Jesus is very much about the intangible.  

(JESUS)  

                                                Keep back the people from me; I am faint

 With the height within.  Children, remember always that dreams are

       deceivers.  No one's exempt from dreaming,

 Not even I.  But all's fraud:  fragments of thought

 Fitting themselves together without a mind.  It seemed to me that I was

       on a higher tower

 Than any pier of those three that blot the tender blue above Herod's

        palace.  Oh, beyond conception

 Exalted over the hills and the seas.  But the tower swayed -- it means

       nothing:  perhaps I slept

 Having remembered the tower guilty of blood in Siloam -- tottered and

       waved all its wild height,

 I felt rushes of the air and heard the stones crumbling … I will not

       cross my day of decision

 With a dream's mind.  Look how this fig-tree shakes his banners above me.  I

       came fasting from the house

And now I am hungry, there will be fruit among the broad leaves.  What,

       utterly barren?  Let neither man

 Nor bird henceforth eat of these boughs that have failed me.

(JUDAS)

Do you

       wish, Master, the beautiful tree were dead?

(JESUS)

 What is that to you?

(To read the complete poem-play, click here.)

Image source (1)
Image source (2):  James Tissot, The Vine Dresser & the Fig Tree
Poem source:  Robinson Jeffers, Dear Judas, or the Dreaming Dead