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The Passion of 1934 The decade turns at Oberammergau; It brings the Passion Year. If who perform Are largely Party members, who attend Show no concern. Those who have seen before Might notice this year more self-confidence Among the soldiery, Iscariot More focused on the specie rate; or see In Caiaphas the makeup man’s construct Of Marx and Engels. Pilate seems this time Not bureaucrat so much as diplomat; Like Herod, deferentially subdued. Almost by definition, one could say, The mob is neither less itself nor more. A little altered too, the Christus. Twice Appearing in the role before, the Man Of Sorrows adds morosely to the rest His fifty years. Behind the pale blue eyes, However, nothing is that was not there Offstage. They are a sort of program note, Unsatisfactory, as précis are. Spectators must themselves extrapolate How far the Via Dolorosa goes And what will be its end. They’ve as a group Some knowledge, insufficient, probably, To show them how the Stations, one by one, Confirm the irreversible. Someone, A conscript—Simon the Cyrenian— At any moment will appear, take up 45 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. The burden, change the ending. Will he not? It cannot finish as it always has. Except it will: Barabbas freed, two parts Of theft and one of threatening the state. Remember that the votive Play began As gratitude for being spared the Plague. Its repetition was to make secure From pestilence the future. Up to now That, absit omen, holds, although the blind, The devil-ridden in the cast Exist to tell us there are plagues and plagues, Betrayal ever bolder in the text, One kiss we have no understudy for. Thomas will doubt, though never quite enough; Peter continue to deny, in Rome, And later, in the dock at Nuremburg. 46 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...

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