I’m afraid I couldn’t find a suitable image/video/song to go with this one, so I’ll just proceed to the poem.
Burning Judas
by Kalyiel
Then everybody tramped to the churchyard. The effigy was dragged to an open place, a black baseball hat on its head, and a half dozen drunken men fell upon it, shouting, kicking, ripping at the limbs.
~ Cynthia Gorney, “A People Apart” (National Geographic, November 2008)
Stomping to the burial ground, they
Wrapped their spider-hands around his head –
The mad shrieks created an unbreakable silence,
Overthrowing God on His throne –
They tied him to a stone effigy,
A decapitated angel with eagle wings,
And then and there they torched him.
They even took their clothes off,
Wrapped them in a bundle and lighted them,
So that they might burn every bit of flesh,
Every bone, every nook and cranny
That might have been hiding his Soul.
His Soul was a pitiful thing –
They found it, scared and shivering,
Behind an upset tomb. It was so thin,
Almost invisible, they almost missed it.
But then – they seized it and took it
To their prison, where they judged it
And found it guilty. The next Saturday,
At dawn, they burned it at the stake.
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 