Judas

What if Judas hadn’t hanged himself but the real punishment had been to stay and haunt the Garden like a second unexpelled Adam, to watch his past gain power by the hour? I can almost see him, shuffling between the trees, a barely tolerated tramp grown prematurely old, mumbling to his lost Messiah: the Christ of the Garden, the transparent Thursday Christ visited for advice by other Judases. Too much Christ too soon, too little Judas too late — always too soon or too late. Yet even so the betrayer’s hope, the prayer for a past accepted and transfigured at last.