CLXXXIV – Habitual Sin

My praenomen is Marcus
To my friends, Magnus (best);
Due to my rank and station
“Centurion” to the rest.

Today we had a prisoner
He was causing quite a stir
The Jews around Judea
renounced him as a cur

A day like any other,
Pilate did his sentence read
He ordered us to flog him
and make the stranger bleed

Though we returned him bloody,
His back was striped and raw,
Forty lashes weren’t sufficient
to appease the angry mob

Pilate, the politician,
again the crowd addressed,
“Is he such a villain,
moreso than Barabbas?”

They cried out for Barabbas
For him, please, clemency!
As for the bloody stranger,
pin him to a tree!

And so the order came,
And so dutifully we went
We waited for the stranger
to bear his cross of torment

A day like any other,
We lashed him to that tree
I picked up the nails,
But then; he looked at me:

In his eyes he knew me,
as if he knew my name
He, in my eyes, a stranger;
I not, in his, the same

A day like any other,
I do not know this man!
I turned back to my labor,
drove the nail through his hand.