A View of the Crucifixion: Pilate's Wife

My husband, Pontius Pilate - I call him Ponty -

and I are in the Lookout Room of the Palace,

from where you can see over the city of Jerusalem.

You have noticed, I know, the cross

outside the window behind me, on Golgotha,

a disused quarry where criminals are executed.

The locals ran out of Jerusalem limestone,

but we have not run out of criminals,

so it’s a useful place on which to stamp our authority.


Golgotha is outside the main western gate of the city,

a handy place to terminate those who scorn our laws

or unduly vex the authority -

in this case, my husband.

Everyone who enters or exits the western gate

has to pass by the exhibition gallery on Golgotha.

If you want to preside over a populace,

make sure your criminals are seen to suffer,

to terrify those who might follow in their wake.

There is no point in executing upstarts

on a green hill far away.


From the window I watch the dead theatre of the absurd.

Ponty sits in a comer,

not daring to look at his handiwork.

I watch Jesus stumble up the rock,

roped to the patibulum,

the crossbeam that his hands will be hammered to, ,

which will then be liited up and placed securely

on top of the upright stake

before his feet are nailed together.

I see how the crossbeam has etched its own shape,

blue-red, into his shoulders.


I watch this king stagger like a drunken slave,

then keel over, smashing the rock blood-red,

before he is whipped to upright again.

He flounders, rises, spits dust,

lurches, manages the few paces left

before his journey’s end is reached.

He falls down again, this time to greet the ground

like an old friend he has waited too long to see.

If I am not mistaken, I see him kiss the rock he falls upon.


The soldiers cut the ropes with their swords;

then their hired carpenter moves in,

stretches Jesus’ arms on the crossbeam

to attach flesh to wood,

and nail the body precisely according to instructions.

Jesus’ body stretches and stiffens into line.

The sound of hammering echoes loudly

against the rocks.


Head down, Ponty covers his ears at this.

The ritual almost complete, the body is raised in place

and seated on a small wooden peg to bear the weight;

the hired carpenter now grasps Jesus’ dangling feet,

lifts and couples them like two unlikely lovers,

presses them together,

bends them to the required angle,

pins them in place, then hammers the nail home

through protesting flesh into the stake.


That done, he stands back to admire

his crippling handiwork -

no need for adjustments, he reckons, textbook clean;

then, after wiping some blood from his face,

the carpenter packs his tools and makes for home,

another job well done.


Watching this, I notice for the first time

that there is no silence on Golgotha:

the street dogs yawn and growl, impatiently,

crouching ready to attack tom oozing flesh -

this man they know can shoo nothing away.

Soldiers slap armour and joke about their last conquest;

the street vendors cry their bargain prices

of nibbles to the chattering tourists,

who linger to look, whisper to each other,

glad they have elsewhere to go.


Overhead, the buzzards hover, their fury in check, »

winging their incessant circles as they hold out

for that dead bulk and weight to give

before they dive to rend human rubble.

The demented women, always women, now look,

now look away, avoiding each other’s eyes,

then draw their damp veils around their faces

to mop up useless tears for their lovers, family, friends.

They keep the habit of years,

turning up in dangerous places ‘

to observe the brute theatre of male violence:

I watch them kill time,

waiting for the soldiers’ permission

before they are allowed to move in

and pick up the pieces.


You watch as Jesus makes a painful shift

from being the one who healed the sick and the lame

to becoming the crippled one himself,

with neither interrupting angel nor healer in sight.

You watch this active man being propelled

into the passive voice:

from being the charismatic leader

who commanded his disciples, “Follow me,”

to being the criminal condemned to be handed over,

whipped, scorned, led away, tied down, crucified.


You watch how Jesus is so quickly reduced

from being the one who made things happen

to the one who has to suffer what others do to him.

From being the guest who gifted jars of wedding wine

to the one who now slurps vinegar. _

From being the leader who called out,

“Come to me all you who labour

and are overburdened and I will give you rest.”

to being the desperado who now cries out,

“My God, why have you abandoned me?”


I absorb the details, alone at the window.

I see this Jesus, my husband’s chosen victim,

hang naked, with nothing between him and his God.

I hear the chief priests shout their taunts,

sweet victory every swollen phrase.

For a moment - was I dreaming? - I thought

the crucified Jesus looked up

at the Tower from his cross,

sought out the window where I stood

and held me, Pilate’s wife, in his gaze,

his eyes drilling my soul.


I wonder, watching him hanging there,

his body’s weight dragging against the nails,

if he is wondering what went wrong?

Does he review everything in his head -

all that has led to this place?

Could he have done things differently?

Could he have said things more clearly,

made his points more insistently?

Did he miss something along the way?

What makes people pick the sides they pick anyway? ‘

Finally there is the time for no more thinking,

no more hurting, no more being.


The bruised eyes close;

the head collapses onto his chest;

the body pitches forwards, off the wooden peg;

the makeshift crown of thorns loses its grip and drops

like some skewered starship falling to the ground.

Then there is silence all around.


When darkness descends like a safety curtain,

nature puts mourning on -

only the cross seems lit from within

I turn away into the room

and Ponty gets up and stands behind me,

feeling for my waist like a blind man

who somehow knows it’s dark for everyone.


The questions that neither of us can answer:

why did Jesus submit to all this?

When things started to get dangerous for him,

why did he not retire to a small cottage

be the Sea of Galilee?

What led him to this place?

In all the earth and the heavens,

what enabled him to endure?

In his poem, Father Denis McBride imagines Pilate’s wife is presented as sympathetic to Jesus, seeing the final moments of the passion from her window in Herod 's Palace, which has a clear sight of Golgotha.