When Passion week started and Jesus <br />Came down to the city, that day <br />Hosannahs burst out at his entry <br />And palm leaves were strewn in his way. <br /> <br />But days grow more stern and more stormy. <br />No love can men's hardness unbend; <br />Their brows are contemptuously frowning, <br />And now comes the postscript, the end. <br /> <br />Grey, leaden and heavy, the heavens <br />Were pressing on treetops and roofs. <br />The Pharisees, fawning like foxes, <br />Were secretly searching for proofs. <br /> <br />The lords of the Temple let scoundrels <br />Pass judgement, and those who at first <br />Had fervently followed and hailed him, <br />Now all just as zealously cursed. <br /> <br />The crowd on the neighbouring sector <br />Was looking inside through the gate. <br />They jostled, intent on the outcome, <br />Bewildered and willing to wait. <br /> <br />And whispers and rumours were creeping, <br />Repeating the dominant theme. <br />The flight into Egypt, his childhood <br />Already seemed faint as a dream. <br /> <br />And Jesus remembered the desert, <br />The days in the wilderness spent, <br />The tempting with power by Satan, <br />That lofty, majestic descent. <br /> <br />He thought of the wedding at Cana, <br />The feast and the miracles; and <br />How once he had walked on the waters <br />Through mist to a boat, as on land; <br /> <br />The beggarly crowd in a hovel, <br />The cellar to which he was led; <br />How, started, the candle-flame guttered, <br />When Lazarus rose from the dead…<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bad-days-3/
