The First Station

           The Sentence

Condemned to die, the Lord is bound
To duty. Advocates not found,
Authorities ascribe to Him
Offenses motivating them
Each unjust moment, then compound
Their wrongs. Blood-thirsty voices sound
The doom which soon shall be renowned
In and beyond Jerusalem:
            Condemned to die.
Christ’s words or silences astound
Or anger powers never crowned
With thorns. Mistreated whim by whim,
He knows there is one way to trim
The losses of those all around
            Condemned to die.

Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. She has three collections—Unloosed, Tides & Currents, and After Before—all with Kelsay Books.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”