My name is Legion

Legion were my hauntings,

and numerous the years of their torments.

Great was my nakedness,

and multiple the chains and shackles

that lay rusting among the weeds,

failed and broken.

Vast was my hopelessness,

deep my despair,

and terrible the fear

evoked by my unholy presence.

Many were my dwellings

among the tombs outside the city.

Considering myself dead,

I was at home there;

and at the same time, lost.

Manifold were the blessings

from the hand of the Galilean;

who arrived, uninvited,

at this desolate place,

to speak his words of healing,

hope,

liberty and life.

They sent him away;

I would have gone with him.

“Return to your people,”

he told me. “Be a living declaration

of the wonders of God.”

I did as he said.

My heart,

however,

followed him to Jerusalem.

© Ken Rookes 2016

At Gerasa

At Gerasa, by the lake,
the grassy weeds struggle for a foothold
in the stony earth among the tombs.
On occasion, and in season,
a determined flower will triumph,
flashing red or yellow in defiance.

At Gerasa, by the lake,
among those tombs,
one took root like a weed.
Naked, wild and captive to madness,
he regularly cast off the shackles and constraints
imposed by nearby townsfolk,
among whom he had once been numbered
as neighbour and kin.
A challenge to good order, comfort and faith,
they had been relieved
when he chose to make his home
half-way between the living and the dead.


At Gerasa, by the lake
one came; human,
but touched with his own strange brand
of divine insanity.
(It is often said that it takes one to know one.)
Beyond the crazed ranting wildness
he saw the red flashing flower of defiant life;
loved him,
and spoke the needed words.

© Ken Rookes 2013

The pigs were drowned

the pigs were drowned




In the shadowy depths
of the lake at Gerasa
the demons lie imprisoned
in the decomposing carcasses
of a herd of swine.
Gone is their host of many years,
the man known as Legion,
having returned home, clothed
unchained, and in his right mind.
There he declares
the wonders of God,
and attempts to resume his life;
the sideways glances remain.

Sometimes a new herd of pigs
forages among the tombs
and the rusty shackles, discarded
on the eastern shore at Gerasa.
The swineherds, for fear,
try to drive them away.
They do not trust the bubbling gasses,
which, at intervals,
the lake releases
from its gloomy bed.

Gone, too, is the prophet
who gave the man his freedom
and caused the commotion.
He was not made welcome.

© Ken Rookes