The Poet Thinks about the Donkey – by Mary Oliver

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight.

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.

On Sunday

It was on the Sunday that he pulled the wheat.

They arrived with flowers, shuffling through the dawn as the dawn snuffed out the last candles of night. Their faces betrayed their belief that yesterday would always be better than tomorrow, despite what he said.

He would not say it again, so why bother to believe him on that score?

And the flowers, they too were silent witnesses to disbelief. Like the grass, they were cut off from the root, the bulb, the source of life. He was the flower they cherished, the flower now perished whose fate the lilies of the field, now tight in hand, would re-enact.

So when they passed the crouched figure at the edge of the road, they thought little of him, scarcely seeing his form through their tears. Had they looked even a little, they would have seen a man letting grain fall through his fingers, dropping to the earth to die and yet to rise again.

It was on the Sunday that he pulled the wheat.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group

On Friday

It was on the Friday that they ended it all.

Of course, they didn’t do it one by one. They weren’t brave enough.

All the stones at the one time or no stones thrown at all.

They did it in crowds…in crowds where you can feel safe and lose yourself, and shout things you would never shout on your own, and do things you would never do if you felt that someone was watching you.

It was a crowd in the church that did it, and a crowd in the civil service that did it, and a crowd in the street that did it, and a crowd on the hill that did it.

And he said nothing. He took the insults, the bruises, the spit on the face, the thongs on the back, the curses in the ears.

He took the sight of his friends turning away, running away. And he said nothing.

He let them do their worst until their worst was done, as on Friday they ended it all… and would have finished themselves had he not cried, “Father, forgive them…”

And began the revolution.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group

On Thursday

It was on the Thursday that he became valuable.

He hadn’t anything to sell…not since leaving his hammer and saw three years earlier. Needless to say, he could knock together a set of trestles or hang a couple of shelves at the drop of a hat, no bother at all.

But he wasn’t into making things, Not now. He was into…well…talking, I suppose, and listening and healing and forgiving and encouraging…all the things for which there’s no pay and the job center has no advertisements. So his work wasn’t worth much.

Nor, indeed, was he.

For, not being well-dressed or well-heeled or well-connected, he wouldn’t have attracted many ticket holders had he been put up for raffle. But he had a novelty value… like the elephant man or the fat lady or the little person at the circus.

Put him on a stage and he might be interesting to look at. Sell him to the circus with the promise of some tricks and there could be a silver penny or two or thirty in it.

It was on the Thursday that he became valuable.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group

On Wednesday

It was on the Wednesday that they called him a wasteful person.

The place smelled like the perfume department of a big store. It was as if somebody had bumped an elbow against a bottle and sent it crashing to the floor, setting off the most expensive stink bomb on earth.

But it happened in a house, not a shop. And the woman who broke the bottle was no casual afternoon shopper. She was the poorest of the poor, giving away the only precious thing she had. And he sat still while she poured the liquid all over his head… as unnecessary as aftershave on a full crop of hair and a bearded chin.

And those who smelled it, and those who saw it, and those who remembered that he was against extravagance, called him a wasteful person. They forgot that he also was the poorest of the poor. And they who had much and who had given him nothing, objected to a pauper giving him everything.

Jealousy was in the air when a poor woman’s generosity became an embarrassment to their tight-fistedness…That was on the Wednesday, when they called him a wasteful person.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group

On Tuesday

It was on the Tuesday that he let them have it.

If you had been there you would have thought that a union official was being taken to task by a group of mobsters. Or that the chairman of a  multinational corporation was being interrogated by left-wing activists posing as shareholders.

They wanted to know why, and they wanted to know how.

The questions they asked ranged from silly childish speculations about whether you would be a bigamist in heaven if you’d married twice on earth, to what was the central rule of civilized behavior.

They knew the answers already…or so they thought, otherwise they never would have asked the questions.

And like most of us they were looking for an argument with no intention of a change of heart.

So he flailed them with his tongue…those who tried to look interested but never wanted to be committed.

And that was on the Tuesday…the day when he let them…let us…have it.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group

On Monday

It was on Monday that religion got in the way,

An outsider would have thought that it was a pet shop’s fire sale. And an outsider, in some ways, wouldn’t have been far wrong.

Only, it wasn’t household pets, it was pigeons that were being purchased. And it wasn’t a fire sale;

it was a rip-off shop in a holy temple bartering birds for sacrifice. And the price was something only the rich could afford. No discounts to students or seniors, pensioners, or social security claimants.

Then he, the holiest man on earth, went through that bizarre bazaar like a bull in a china shop.

So the doves got liberated and the pigeon sellers got angry. And the police went crazy, and the poor people clapped like mad, because he was making a sign that God was for everybody, not just for those who could afford him.

He turned the tables on Monday…the day that religion got in the way.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group

The Poet Thinks about the Donkey – by Mary Oliver

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight.

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.