Classic Poem

The crookëd tree creaked as its loaded bough dipped
And suddenly jerked up. The rope had slipped,
And hideously Judas fell, and all the grass
Was soused and reddened where he was,
And the tree creaked its mirth. . . .
Mid the hot sky
Appeared immediate dots tiny and high,
Till downward wound in batlike herds
Black, monstrous, gawky birds,
And, narrowing their rustling rings,
Alit, talons foremost. And with flat wings
Flapped in the branches, and glared, and croaked and croaked,
While no compassionate human came and cloaked
The thing that stared up at the giddy day
With pale blue eyeballs and wry-lipped display
Of yellow teeth closed on the blue, bit tongue.
Overhead the light in silence hung,
And fiercely showed the sweaty, knotted hands
Clutching the rope about the swollen glands. . . . .
And the birds croaked and croaked, evilly eyeing
The thing so lying,
Which no commiserate pity came and cloaked,
But which soaked
The earth, so that the flies
Dizzily swung over its winkless eyes,
And in a crawling, shiny, busy brood
Blackened the sticky blood,
And tickled the tongue choked mouth that sought to cry
Bitterly and beseechingly
Against the judgment of th' unflinching sky.

The poor dead, lonely thing had not a shroud
From that still, frightful glare until a cloud
Of darkness, flowing like a dye
Over the edges of the sky,
Browned and put out the silent sun:
A benison
Of three hours' space.
And it had power
To put a shadow into that thing's face,
And th' invisible birds fell silent by its grace.

Thus Judas lay in shadow and all was still. . . .
Then faint light, like water, began again to fill
The sky, and a whisper—came it from the grass,
Whispering dry and sparse,
Or from the air beyond the neighbouring hill?—
Ebbed, as a spirit on a sigh
Passing beyond alarm:
“It is finished!”
And there was calm
Under the empty tree and in the brightening sky.