Caravaggio

During that far time when there were many gods

and the kings of Assyria considered

the world lying west of the Euphrates,

from that river to the Sea of Joppa,

theirs by right of threat of conquest, in Shechem –

that some call Bethulia, some Nablus,

between  Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim –

lived a beautiful woman named Judith.

She was a widow with a maid servant,

and dunams of wheat fields, and olive groves,

and scrublands for grazing flocks of goats and sheep.

 

Allegedly, this nubile woman’s courage,

cunning, and her zeal for her god saved

her people from slaughter. She has been

immortalised – by Caravaggio,

Gentileschi, Bigot, and Klimt twice.

Sometimes her maid servant appears –

but only the head of Holofernes,

the Assyrian general threatening

Shechem, and whom Judith cajoled into wine,

and decapitated in his stupor.

 

Hers has become a tale increasingly

salaciously painted by Europeans;

a sort of Red Riding Hood for grown ups;

a PC version of Salomé

and John the Baptist; a cautionary tale

for bibulous tyrants; a reckoning

for the straitened widows of Shechem,

Bethulia, Nablus.