Bust of Pilate

A concave darkness, deep in eyes of stone
Sees true and false in one uneasy breath;
A bust and not the rest, no flesh and bone.
The heartless head of one who dealt out death
Is, unsurprisingly, colorless, naught.
His eyes are hollowed out by sculptor’s skill,
The iris is a void, the pupil wrought
By tender scraping, scratching, smoothing ‘til
Two delicate dots protrude beneath brows,
Effectively conveying eyes that can
See, but his vision is nothing now;
It might have been as nothing even then,
When washing absent hands in basin show
He claimed he hadn’t seen and didn’t know.

You can listen to me read it here
https://soundcloud.com/benwhitepoetry/bust-of-pilate