That I Might Hear

By night we came to take him,

I Malchus, and a cohort of Temple soldiers,

in the still hours before daybreak,

we servants of the High Priest stormed the garden

where he stood. His fellows slept, in we crept

to arrest him. And there he stood, waiting!

We were following a direct order, to take him by number,

and led there by his trusted fellow.

Some awoke and then we could not find him,

not so simple then, he stood there without resistance,

and could not be seen.

And his trusted one, our trusted one, went forward

greeting him, kissed him in fellowship, as a signal,

our signal – the Galilean looked at our man, his man,

with an oddly resigned, yet penetrating glance.

I saw it, then I beheld him, spoke my office and demanded,

Are you he? He replied, I am.

And we laid hold of him. Then it happened.

So oddly calm, so in command of himself, suddenly

his nearest, a bear of a fellow, leapt at me with a fair blade

and whacked my left ear, nearly severed it.

It came so fast, unexpected.

What followed was still more shocking.

This very Galilean held up his hand, stayed his friend,

admonished him in dialect – then told us to let them all go,

we have whom we came for. And without hesitation

he approached me with that same hand and laid it

over my gashed and throbbing ear.

When he removed it, all was gone, the wound, the pain,

the hearing, all I got was ringing buzzing, my brain went cold.

My men had to nudge me to sternly fulfill my office,

I went through the motions in a daze, I looked at him,

not grasping, but grasping his shoulder I barely still heard him

saying, By night you come to take me like some thief,

when all the while I taught openly by day, open prey – now pray

do as you are sent, that it may be fulfilled.

That didn't help clear my thoughts,

and all that passed thereafter in my lifetime –

my leaving the Temple service and joining his circle,

sharing its joys and its devotion, its bread and its wine,

its destiny and its fate, in loving, serving and remembering him –

had its birth and its prophecy, its torment and its promise,

in that moment in that garden in that night,

when he healed my ear, that I might hear.