He never went abroad to broaden him
and though he learned to read, he did not write
anything worth saving. Once, at a whim,
he scribbled something they hadn't got right
in the sand and erased it. Few could know
whether to credit any of the vulgar rumors
surrounding his birth in a shed. There were
whispers and a gap of thirty years.
Then more rumors trickled through the countryside
about the artisan's son turned wonderworker:
probably a charlatan - blasphemer to be sure. Wide-
eyed, some claimed he raised the dead (and healed lepers!),
before the Romans nailed him - as they nailed all such-
and the neighbors sniffed, "He didn't come to much!"
by Robert Siegel from The Waters Under the Earth
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