University of Virginia Library

If held and questioned amiably, no doubt
Caiaphas would have said he was a priest,
And not a prophet; and he might have said
That his eyes rested well on what they saw,
And that his ears required no crash or murmur
Of innovation for their daily music.
There were some rumors, but he smiled at them
And all who heeded them, and shook his head
Reprovingly, as at uneasy children;
And so he smiled tonight at Nicodemus,
Who had come late. More like a fugitive
He looked, in a long cloak that covered him
With dark humility that composed itself
Conveniently with night, than like a lord
At home in his own city; and Caiaphas,
Greeting him, asked him why.

“Why do you wear
Your shroud while you are living, Nicodemus?
And a black shroud at that. Why do you pay
For noble robes and cover them with a sack?
Are you afraid of robbers?”

“No—not robbers.”
And sighing as he said it, Nicodemus
Sat gazing at a darkness on the floor,
Where the black cloth had fallen. “No—not robbers.”
“You are afraid of something, Nicodemus.
I have had fear myself, and know the signs.
I was afraid once of an elephant.
There are no elephants in Jerusalem.
What is it then that ails you? If I know,
There is no need of asking; for your coming
Like this would be an answer. Was he pleased
With your accommodation of your graces
To the plain level of his lowliness?
I have been told he was a carpenter—
Before he was a ...”

“You may go as far
As that, and frequently,” said Nicodemus,
“And find yourself as far from the same word
As you are now. He was a carpenter;
But there are men who were dead yesterday,
And are alive today, who do not care
Profoundly about that. What the man is,
Not what he was to unawakened eyes,
Engages those who have acknowledged him
And are alive today. Though he has wrought
With common tools, he does not ask of us
That we be carpenters.”

Caiaphas laughed unheard,
And curled a quiet lip. “I am glad of that;
For you might cut your finger, Nicodemus.
And what's all this that you are telling me
Of men dead yesterday and still alive?
I do not know such men, and would far rather
Not meet them in the dark.”

“It is not there
That you are like to know them, Caiaphas.
They have come out of darkness—where we are,
I fear, and where I fear we may remain.
High men, like you and me, whether by worth,
Or birth, or other worldly circumstance,
Have risen to shining heights, and there may still
Rise higher, where they shall be no higher than earth.
Men who are braver may forgo their shining,
Leaving it all above them, and go down
To lowliness and peace, and there find life.
Caiaphas, you and I are not alive.
We are two painted shells of eminence
Carried by two dead men. Because we move,
And breathe, and say a few complacent words
With tongues that are afraid to say our thoughts,
We think we are alive. But we are dead.”

Caiaphas laughed: “Small wonder, Nicodemus,
That you conceal your death in some such rag
As that there on the floor when you go calling
On carpenters at night. How strong, I wonder,
With his assumptions and assurances,
Must a man be to be a carpenter
And honor your condescension without laughing.”

“My fears and vanities are confessed. He smiled,
If that will comfort you, and then assured me
That he had more than once himself been driven
Not only to expediency, but hiding.
Yes, Caiaphas, good men like you and me
Have driven this man, if he be man, to vanish
Beyond the laws that hate him.”

“Why not say
Beyond the laws he hates, and done with it?
What's wrong with them? Would his be any better?
Our laws and Caesar's are enough, God knows,
To keep the safest of us occupied
With not forgetting them. This man is mad.
Believe me, Nicodemus, he is mad,
Or such an overflowing charlatan
As never was before. I have not heard him,
But waves of his high language have made echoes
All through Jerusalem. Beware of him,
I say to you, and stay at home o' nights.
I can see peril waiting, Nicodemus,
For this man—and for you, if you pursue him.
I am not given, or over much, to meddling,
But if you love him and would tell him so,
Tell him his home is not Jerusalem,
And hasten him away. You have the power
And place to save him. Save him, and you save more.
If he is what your folly says he is,
Why should he hide from powerless things of earth
Like us, who cannot hurt him? What strength is ours
To injure him? What can we do to him?
No, the whole story shakes. It's like a house
That creaks too soon—one that he might have built
When at his trade.”

“You may destroy his body,
Which is an instrument whereon the spirit
Plays for a time—and not for a long time,
He tells me. He must hold it as he may
From harm till there is no more use for it.
Meanwhile he is a man, with a man's end
Awaiting him. There is no fear in him,
But for the blindness that is ours who fear him.”

“I am no more than man,” said Caiaphas,
No longer smiling. “But I do not fear him;
And saving your regard, I am not blind.
Whether or not I am the painted shell
Of something dead, requires a contemplation.
I had not thought so, and had not been told
Until you spoke. Your vocal ornaments
Are not all complimentary this evening.
Are they the carpenter's?”

“No, they are mine,”
Said Nicodemus briefly, with a sigh.
“And they are past retraction or improvement.
You may forget them, but I'll not unsay them;
And spoken words that are unsaid are said
Only a little louder than at first.
No, Caiaphas; we are dead, and we are blind;
And worse than either, we are both afraid.
You don't like that.”

“I treasure it so little,”
Caiaphas answered, rather quietly,
“That from another I might not receive it
Without a word in kind. But you are mad;
You and your carpenter are mad together,
And God sees what's to come. My office owes
A few indulgences and obligations
Even to madness, and I'll say no more—
No more than one more warning, Nicodemus,
That you provision your seditious prophet
Out of Jerusalem, and with no lost time.”

“In God's name, Caiaphas,” cried Nicodemus,
Rising and holding out his hands as if
To clutch two hands unseen, “is one poor string
The sum of all your music, and one word
Your only song? Because you are afraid,
Must you see nothing in the world but fear?
There is no fear in this man, Caiaphas.
He shuns a little while a coming death,
Which he foresees, that you and I may live;
And your fond warning now that I may save him
Is like a child's unwillingness to read
A book of easy letters that are life,
Because they are new letters, and not death.
You are a priest of death, not knowing it.
There is no life in those old laws of ours,
Caiaphas; they are forms and rules and fears,
So venerable and impressive and majestic
That we forget how little there is in them
For us to love. We are afraid of them.
They are the laws of death; and, Caiaphas,
They are the dead who are afraid of dying.
So do not say again that I may save
This man from death. There is no death for him.”

“There may be something comfortingly like it,
If he is here too long,” said Caiaphas;
“And I may soon be weary, Nicodemus,
Of hearing you repeat that I'm afraid.
The laws that were our fathers' laws are right
For me, and I can see no death in them,
Save death itself—which is the only death
I know. I know it, and I do not fear it;
Or not more than another. Only the mad
May welcome it, so long as life is better.
Have you a finger to lay on a law
Of ours that says to us we shall be mad?”

“No, Caiaphas; I'm not saying that we are mad.
I'm saying that we are dying while we are dead.
He tells me of light coming for the world,
And of men loving darkness more than light.
He is the light; and we, who love the dark
Because our fathers were at home in it,
Would hound him off alone into the hills
And laugh to see that we were rid of him.
In darkness we might see as much as that,
Not seeing what we were doing for ourselves
In doing ill for him. He will not die,
Though he find death where we have driven him.
The pity and waste of it is our not living,
With life so near us, and to take as ours,
Like shining fruit from an undying tree.
The fruit may fall, and we may crush the pulp
And blood of it, but it will not be dead.
It will replenish and increase itself
Immortally, because it is alive—
As even the lowly are, who love him first.
The lowly are the first inheritors
Of his report, the first acknowledgers
Of his reward—having no fame to lose,
No brief and tinsel perquisite of pomp,
Or profitable office, to renounce.
They are not politicians, Caiaphas,
Like you and me, who tremble when we step
An ell's length from the middle of the road;
They are not sceptred slaves of precedent
And privilege, who must buy their breath of life
With fears and favors and hypocrisies
That would, if recognized, make honor sick.
I say this, Caiaphas; for I have heard you
Citing the riff-raff that he feeds with words,
Telling them words are food till they believe it.
You have not heard and tasted them to know,
Or not to know, the food that lives in them
And quickens them till they are words no longer,
But are the Word. We tenants of high places
Are too high now to hear them, or to see
From where we are the inevitable harvest
Of this eternal sowing. Come with me,
But once, to see and hear him, Caiaphas;
Or, to be more courageous than I am,
Be once an item in the multitude,
And let yourself inquire, for once, how much
The lowliest, in his primal composition,
Would look, if you were God, like Caiaphas.
You don't like that, but there's a time for man
When he must speak, or die, or follow himself
To deserts where men starve and are forgotten.
I could starve here as well, and hate myself,
No doubt, a little harder for so doing.
I could sit starving in these noble robes,
As you have called them in your pleasantry,
But they would not be noble—not for me.
Truth is a sword of air cleaving the air,
Sometimes, to make it bleed; and here am I,
Armed, you would fancy, with a sword like that.
You smile to see me strike, drawing no blood—
Though blood may follow, and may God say whose;
And all so needlessly and against fate,
Except it be his fate that his worn body
Shall perish that he may live. So many have died
Before their work has lived that one more dying
Will not be new on earth; and this man's dying
Will not be death. What has truth done to us
That we must always be afraid of it,
As of a monster with a shape unknown
To man, prowling at night and breathing fire?
The truth is not like that; we are like that—
Or would be so if we were not so little.
Not all Jerusalem creeping in one skin
Would make a monster for this man to fear.
One fiery word of truth would pierce and frighten
Jerusalem then as now. We are afraid,
Caiaphas; and our flawed complacency
Is a fool's armor against revelation.
Why must we turn ourselves away from it?
If you and I together should stand with him,
For all to see, who knows what we should see!”

“We might see stones flying to find our heads,
For one thing, Nicodemus. You are mad.
Say to your carpenter that he is mad,
Or say what else you will. Take him away
While there is time, and hide him where the law
May lose him, or forget him. Telling you this,
I'm trying to say that a long suffering priest
May love a madman who has been a friend.”

“Caiaphas, you are sorry to say that,
But will not own your sorrow, or your fear.
When sorrow hides itself in sophistry,
It might as well be scorn. I should have known.
I should have gone alone to my cold house
That will be colder for my coming here.
God knows what ails us in Jerusalem.
You cannot wash the taste of your misgivings
Away with wine, or rub the fear of them
Out of your face with an unquiet finger.
There's no security in a subterfuge
Where truth is marked a madness. I am not mad,
Unless a man is mad who brings a light
For eyes that will not open. I have been
A burden for your patience, Caiaphas.
I shall not come again.”

“Yes, many a time,
I trust, and always welcome, Nicodemus.
When this absurdity has overblown
Its noise, and is an inch of history
That a few may remember, you will come.
There is a covenant that has not changed,
And cannot change. You will not go from us
For a mad carpenter; and as for him,
I am afraid for him unless you save him.
You may do that, but he will not save you—
As you would say it; for you are one of us,
And you will save yourself at the last hour;
And you will be as wary of Messiahs
Henceforth as I am. You may take yourself
Alone to him at night and feast with him
On dreams till you are drunk with his evangel,
And when your frenzied head is clear again,
You will rejoice, like a man dug from ruin,
To find the sun and stars, and the old laws,
Unfailing and unchanged and firm as ever.
You and your carpenter, while you have eyes,
Will not be seen as man and man together
Where there is daylight in Jerusalem.
Some things are not, and this is one of them.
When he is chained, or stoned, or crucified,
As like enough he will be if you let him,
You and your sorrow may be seen, too late,
Mourning where safety and necessity
Have buried him. But you will never be seen
With him beside you in Jerusalem.
I know you, Nicodemus.”

Nicodemus
Trembled and held his cloak with clutching hands
As if it were his life. “Safety, you say?
Necessity, you say? Panic, I say!
Panic, and ancestors, and desperation!
Rabbits and rats! God help me, Caiaphas,
If I am what you see. If you are right,
I am not worth my name.”

“As one of us,”
Caiaphas answered, and his words were calm—
“As one of us, I see you, Nicodemus,
True to our laws and hearts, and to our God,
Who chastened even Moses when he faltered,
And held him out of Canaan. Am I right?
Why, surely I am right. I am always right.
If I were wrong, I should not be a priest.”

Caiaphas rubbed his hands together slowly,
Smiling at Nicodemus, who was holding
A black robe close to him and feeling it
Only as darkness that he could not see.
All he could see through tears that blinded him
To Caiaphas, to himself, and to all men
Save one, was one that he had left alone,
Alone in a bare room, and not afraid.