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.