Some Other Country

Pilate Explains

Easy for you all today to blame

My failure then to take a firmer line

The baying crowd that day were just the same;

Yellow-eyed, and stinking of cheap wine,

So quick to point the finger. And as if

All that wasn’t enough, there’s the wife,

Who hated living here from the start

Elbowing my ribs about some dream she’s

Had where he appeared; well have a heart;

Guilty as the next man to being weak, but

Think while you prepare the nose of history

In the end it turned our what I did was right:

Where would you be now if I had set him free?

– John O’Donnell