This Wood

What is the good of all this wood

and what's to be done with it

now the men are gone and the crowd dispersed?

Set it ablaze on this barren hill

and hope the smoke hides the smell of blood.

We did as you said, but there are splinters still,

patterned strangely in the embers.

The ashes smell of incense.

Peasant people rake among it

and take it away for keepsakes.

The stench of death remains.

A simple fire became a pyre for something unseen.

The shattered planks turned to ash

those followers stole like gold.

Even the twisted nails were taken 

away from where we killed those men.

A blooded dawn climbs out the Orient.

Look, in the light, the've missed one thing -

a crown of thorns discarded in the dust.