Salted with grains of blood his cheek

Pearls flung from the crazy crown

That jaunts on his burning, sweat-thatched head

Through the leering, holy-day town:

The dizzy clang of the soldiers, and the jerky falling down

Like a broken doll in the dust, and the spit and the slime.

And time pleats back like a robe and I gasp and I bow

To the stench and the shame and the sting

Of other blood, in another crowd,

In another, simpler spring.

In that hidden, stagnant place, I feel the kick and the dance

Of pattering mercy, quickening grace, my unpractised fingers glance

At his shining, tattered face, and fast

I hold, as shielding him, lulling him then,

comfort-clothed in Jerusalem:

I stand tall, a mother at last.