Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE NEW APOCRYPHA: AT DECAPOLIS, by EDGAR LEE MASTERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NEW APOCRYPHA: AT DECAPOLIS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I am a farmer and live
Last Line: This is the devil that from you I cast.
Variant Title(s): The Accusation


(Mark, Chapter V.)

1
THE ACCUSATION

I am a farmer and live
Two miles from Decapolis.
Where is the magistrate? Tell me
Where the magistrate is!

Here I had made provision
For children and wife,
And now I have lost my all;
I am ruined for life.

I, a believer, too,
In the synagogues. --
What is the faith to me?
I have lost my hogs.

Two thousand hogs as fine
As ever you saw,
Drowned and choked in the sea --
I want the law!

They were feeding upon a hill
When a strolling teacher
Came by and scared my hogs --
They say he's a preacher,

And cures the possessed who haunt
The tombs and bogs.
All right; but why send devils
Into my hogs?

They squealed and grunted and ran
And plunged in the sea.
And the lunatic laughed who was healed,
Of the devils free.

Devils or fright, no matter
A fig or a straw.
Where is the magistrate, tell me --
I want the law!

2
JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ

Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear,
If you have wit to understand my plea.
Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear.
Poor man possessed of such is partly free.

Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains
May pluck while running, howling through the mire
And take a little gladness for his pains,
Some fury for unsatisfied desire.

But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew, --
But then this lunatic had rights. You grant
Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew
His baffled spirit. How significant,

As they were legion and so named! The point
Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath; --
Desire puts a spirit out of joint.
Swine-devils are for swine who have no path.

But man with many lusts, what is his way,
Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms?
He prays for night to come, and for the day
Amid the miry places and the tombs.

But hogs run to the sea. And there's an end.
Would I might cast the swinish demons out
From man forever. Yet the word attend.
The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt?

What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved?
What loss of lands and houses, man being free?
Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved,
Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see.

Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth,
Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw;
Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe
Free souls with courage to transgress the law.

By casting demons out from self, or those
Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues
Would leave to battle singly with his woes --
What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs?

Which being lost, men play the hypocrite
And make the owner chief in the affair.
You banish me for witchcraft. I submit.
Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.

And into swine where better they belong,
Casting the swinish devils out of men,
The devils have their place at last, and then
The man is healed who had them -- where's the wrong,

Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues
Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud
The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs.
This rule has been the statute since the flood.

Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw.
Is it not so with judges first and last --
You break the law to specialize the law? --
This is the devil that from you I cast.





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