Good Friday (2011)
The main Image is a contemporary Depiction of the Crucified Christ by the Artist, from the personal archive of Dragi Le Muse MCMXCIX with all rights reserved to the artist and the photographer.
Late Evening
Liverpool
23 April 2011
There is much traffic
in the Estuary tonight
as the smog alights
and casts its net
upon the coastline.
The heavy smell of cordite,
or is it scrap metal,
from the Huskisson
or Canada Docks
on the Port of Liverpool?
The mighty Fort George
lies at anchor,
its conning towers
capped by the smoggy yellow;
late night revellers
looking in bags and pockets
for their Ventolin inhalers.
The ducks and geese are loud
in the basin below the window
where earlier sat a seagull
eyeing the food on the coffee table.
The ship’s engines now just
a distant hum
but another ship approaches,
shimmering lights,
a trawler,
and behind it a flotilla
heading upstream
to Ellesmere Port.
A Tanker with tugs to
port and stern
another on the bow,
a mighty tanker
the length of this warehouse
twice over
on the Waterloo Dock!
The Pier Head stands empty
but bathed in lights,
Her Majesty’s Canadian
Ship of War
slipping its moorings
on Maundy Thursday.
The great clock
on the Liver strikes
One past the hour. . .
and despite the smog
a pleasant night.
Recollections of another darkness.
A spiritual pollution.
A different smog.
When the Universe gasped
and the Host of Heaven
gazed on in hapless awe
as Salvation bore the stripes
and yielded opened hands
and crossed feet
to the spite-driven nails
of fallen man,
a Crown of Thorns,
and with a deathly hush
the powers of darkness rush
ever so briefly in
savouring an even more momentary victory
as Salvation yielded. . .
then made a Universal Declaration. . .
It is finished!
and smite them asunder.
4 July 2011
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2023
The Original was penned on 23 April 2011
The Striking photographic image, a contemporary Image of the Crucified Christ as depicted by the Artist,
from the personal archive of Dragan Le Muse MCMXCIX
with all rights reserved to the artist and the photographer.
