Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 36: I-N-R-I.

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About This Book

A collection of verse that shifts between brisk depictions of modern life—motor races and city heat—and intimate lyrical sonnets exploring love, memory, and devotional longing. Classical and medieval references recur alongside pagan pastoral fantasies that imagine escape to woodland Hesperides, while formal experiments include songs, sonnets, ballades, rondeaux and a pantoum. A seasonal sequence maps moods across spring to winter, and a concluding suite treats mortality through elegy and dark humor. The poems balance energetic narrative scenes with reflective, sometimes elegiac meditations on desire, nature, and death.

I-N-R-I.

WITH bleeding brows beneath a thorn-meshed crown,

With swollen hands fast bound in leathern thong,

I saw One stand amid a surging throng

That spat on Him and strove to drag Him down.

On His bowed back the ridg’d welts scarlet lay

Traced long with bloody dew. His haggard face

Was streaked with sweat and blood, as in that place

He silent stood and silent gazed away.

Once more that One I saw, still garlanded

With mocking thorns. Through either bleeding hand

And through both patient feet a mangling nail

Was driven deep. Some cursed, some laughed, cried “Hail,

God crucified!...” And some crouched low in dread

And wept, and thunderous darkness filled the land...