Temptation

After Shane McRae's "The Hastily Assembled Angel Also Sustains the World"

“Icarus #1” by Ank Draijer

Mend this moment—
Our Son is falling.
 
 
Beneath the temple's pinnacle—
     the holy city’s highest holy—

          we wait. 
                   On Jerusalem stone 
                                                 we array 
ourselves for a pause—bells, pomegranates 
weight fringe to earth—
 
we orbit now.
 
 
A thrum pitches our invisible crowd 
     past here, past how: 
 
             Catch him. 
                         Catch him, lest 
                                                  he fall. 
We, arms encircling (each and each), 
keep expediencies, run alongside, 
 
under, over all 
 
 
that could so viciously run awry. Catch 
     him, catch him, the Son is falling. 
 
                     Gather time 
                               in intractable 
                                                    knots.
Above, Messiah spars the tempter (matched
beyond match), to sieve errors in reason, 
 
stay execution—

a while yet. Not long ago, He passed 
     planets in the dash to womb’s 
 
                       throne, passed 
                                 continents and
                                                         ages,
to meet the meridian, to suture 
the center point of history to His
 
own body— 

to stitch the cracked veil with lily stems.
     He weighs salvation against the cost 
 
                       of bread now, 
                                  riches, then 
                                                      power. 
Wayfarer, wayfarer, do you behold 
twin paths—bearing kings’ scepters 
 
or riding a Passover ass?

After forty days, Imagination is ravenous 
       for bread. Wrath would taste of grain 
 
                 tumbled by a mill 
                           stone, dirt-ground
                                                           bread.
Waiting is manna. Wings sieve currents,
wake air above, beneath. Light lathes our 
 
circumference,

slippers on stone, heads upturned to 
        the plunge. He feels the heft, a gold 
 
                       orb in one hand,
                                         Baptismal
                                                          dove
in the other, feathered covenant— 
chimes, wings, an intelligence to 
 
spell the devil 

of his tricks. Behold, my beloved Son,
       echoes down—mercy unwinds.
 
              Get thee behind me—
                         a quantum moment 
                                                   when sight 
writes the end—when script becomes
scripture. Still, we none of us look 

away—

Not one of us 
        looks away. 

Elizabeth Pinborough is a poet and artist from Salt Lake City. She is coeditor of Young Ravens Literary Review and loves exploring the brain in her art.