Scales

I once thought justice
was a simple balancing
        but now,
shedding its fragile flakes of skin,
        like fish-scales,
        tarnished silver,
        scurf,
it disintegrates,
leaving feathery bones,
        all for show.

I had a faith
        in reckoning,
        in how our innocence might
weigh against our sin,
        how,
        for every law,
there was a kind of natural justice.

I once believed
voices would be heard
and penitence accepted
        and once
I believed in understanding.

But the scales of justice
        are tilted
        toward statute,
        to pronouncement
        and tomes of judgement,
the Book of Jeremiah rendered down
        to legality
and tariffs of correction.

Other scales
protect the eyes with blindness,
        the horned skin,
        the calloused sight,
Saul of Tarsus fallen on his highway
        and led into Damascus
till the darkness fell from his eyes.

I once believed
the persecuted would be delivered
        but now
        oppressors, by decree,
        declare theirs is the glory
        and theirs the kingdom,
however divided,
however weighed
        in any balance,
        secular or divine,
        and still found wanting.

© BH, 2025

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There’s a lot of it about. Pleas for justice. Now, I hear it from other voices raised in anger - the privileged whose freedom to speak unchallenged out is infringed, they say, by the subordinate ones crying out to be heard. 

Justice slides into legality, the oppressors shout back louder and rewrite the law because they have the power to enforce it.

Recent events and developments testify to this but when I thought about the scales of justice and other scales of blindness, I found a theme of judgement that came from somewhere else.

I don’t purport to be a person of faith. Still, I was steeped in various Scots church traditions and, I dare say, all the faiths of the world will agree, there is a higher plane of existence, power, and justice than the base machinations of dictators and crazed fanatics.

Nuff said – you know who they are.

Here's some source material: Jeremiah 22:3

Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

Image taken from: Belshazzar’s Feast, by Rembrandt - Codart, Public Domain, Link