Those Greeks

They did the best they could,
those Greeks,
paring and turning the pegs they had to hand,
to plug the misshapen holes in the story
he who had come among them told.

Meanwhile,
back in Jerusalem,
it was all unlearning.
the leader was not quite what was expected,
not the kind of man they thought the books foretold;
different, and much more.

They could never quite agree, of course,
so they set out to crawl across bridges of metaphor,
above that abyssal other world
they feared but could not name.

They speculated for 300 years,
until Imperial swords outside the door
brought them at last to a simulated comity.