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
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
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
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