Van Gogh's Good Friday

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One candle extinguished
While another flickers
Over the emptiness of a chair
Vacated in the loneliness
Of collegial treachery. [1]Vincent_van_Gogh__1853_1890____The_Olive_Trees__1889__2_.jpg
 
Olive trees anguished
With clouds emptied
As tears of the Kidron
Weep over injury inflicted  [2]
By pharisaic torture.
 
Isaiah collapses
Under an osteoporotic spine
So we can forget
Why the servant died
For our transgressions. [3]
 
All nature joins
In the sadness of Calvary
As the creation rebels
At the attack on their maker
By intellectual torment. [4]
 
Trees truncated
Out of the land of the living
Sprout again [5]
Gently endowed
With resurrection triumph.
 
April 2010
 
On visiting The Real van Gogh – The Artist and His Letters at The Royal Academy of Arts, London.