A dramatic monologue illuminates the turbulent story of Mark 14 from a new perspective in Robert Hamberger's Gethsemane Nude
Theological re-interpretations have never been so popular. They range from those where the author adds a startling new myth and message of his own, such as Philip Pullman in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, to the kind which remains faithful to the original text but finds previously overlooked clues to revisionist readings. This week's poem, "Gethsemane Nude," by Robert Hamberger is one of the latter. It's from a sequence, "Bible Studies," which forms the final section of Hamberger's 2007 collection, Torso, and combines autobiographical sonnets about his first encounters with "The Good Book" with more freely structured poems concerning same-sex relationships depicted in the Old and New Testaments. Some of the inspiration for the sequence also draws on Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry by the poet and scholar Gregory Woods .
The poem is cast as a dramatic monologue, spoken by the mysterious young man who fleetingly appears in Mark 14. This chapter of Mark's Gospel is a turbulent narrative, heavily shadowed by the impending crucifixion. There is both calculated evil and sheer human inadequacy. Judas betrays Christ cold-bloodedly, while Peter denies him and is mortified. Soldiers and high priests mill about while Christ tries to pray: the disciples are constantly overcome by sleep when they should be keeping vigil. The story is terse and fast moving, with narrative gaps left for the reader to fill. Whatever one's views about its spiritual truth, I don't think anyone could read Mark 14, without sensing the documentary truth in it, and, as with any report of a chaotic public event, more layers in that truth than the reporter or his reader can ever grasp.
It has been suggested that the boy was a male prostitute, the loose linen wrapper he wore, the "uniform" of his profession. "Gethsemane Nude" neither denies nor confirms such readings. What sets the poem apart is the authenticity with which the young man's passion is invested. He proclaims his desire with a mixture of boldness and delicacy: "what could I do/ but give up everything/ to sip his shadow?" The words of Christ's own command to the disciples are subverted here to convey the total immersion of erotic passion.
The young man suffers a double entrancement, the effect not only of Christ's physical beauty but his power over language. His speech begins with a scattering of metaphors lifted from the parables and sermons, strange phrases, familiar to us, which have "lassoed" him, and which the poem helps us hear afresh, with the same skin-prickling sensation that Hamberger recalls elsewhere on first hearing Bible stories as a child.
The reader sees everything through the young man's eyes. Even the pictorial "nude" stanzas show us an image that he, narcissistically, must find beautiful ? the naked moonlit flesh that is his own. But the tactile, interior quality remains: we feel the cold blade prod him in the ribs, and the sheet falling away "as water strips a skin."
He could be an unreliable narrator, yet when he says that Christ "admits me to his gaze" it doesn't seem like a fantasy. Given Christ's attitude to outsiders and social outcasts, we can recognise this un-judging acceptance as completely "in character."
It isn't clear if there has been actual physical contact between the two young men. The reference to "one man kissing another" most likely signals Judas's kiss of betrayal. It seems probable that the boy's love, though recognised and understood, remains unconsummated. It's only the two prayers which "marry" ? Christ's own anguished cry to his Father for deliverance, and the lover's secret "prayer" to Christ: "Run with me now where no God/ can catch us."
The young man looses his linen wrap when he escapes from the soldiers. Perhaps this provides an opportunity for a final desperate attempt at seduction, an exhibitionistic display of his own beauty before, recalling the moment when Adam and Eve first become aware of their nakedness, he disappears through the fig trees.
The "betrayal" in the last stanza could be the disappearance itself, or the compulsive erotic excitement that must be experienced alone, unshared. Nevertheless, the imagery of "words and doves" seems more than sexual. Perhaps, uneducated and inarticulate before, the young man has found nothing less than the power of language? The poem itself may be his miracle.
? Copies of Robert Hamberger's collection Torso are available by post from Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford, BD9 4HH, at �7.95, plus P&P �2
Gethsemane Nude
And they all forsook him and fled. And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.
St Mark, Chapter 14, Verses 50-52
He's my firmament.
I hang on every word,
lassoed by considering the lilies,
by camels and needle eyes,
bread of life and light of the world.
I studied his mouth, hour by hour,
until I confessed a thirst for his throat
exposed below the beard,
his wrists, slender gazelles
when loose sleeves slip to reveal them.
What could I do
but give up everything
to sip his shadow?
He admits me to his gaze,
permits my passion. He lets me stay.
I could have been the woman
who stroked the edge of his robe,
who wiped his heels with her hair.
His men buzz as if he's honey,
as if we might swallow him whole.
Tonight's moon notes his cry
among the camellias.
He kneels to call the air father.
Saints snore while I shiver in linen,
keeping my chilly vigil.
My prayer marries his:
Run with me now where no God
can catch us. He walks instead
to swords and spears and clamour,
one man kissing another.
When they prod a blade at my ribs
I leap from their net,
wrestle free from my sheet
as water strips a skin.
My glimmer swims naked through fig trees.
He leaves me to my betrayal
between the olive groves.
He bequeaths the gift of breath
to my body's temple
where words and doves resound.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/apr/25/poem-week-robert-hamberger
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