Kabare Carving: Watching the Cross

Date added: 30/01/2026

The right mahogany door relief, based on John 19:17-27, at the entrance to the library of St Andrew’s College, Kabare, Kenya, carved by Benson Ndaka in 1991. Commissioning and photo: Graham Kings

Kenyan Christ crucified

    by Kenyan soldiers.

Your beloved disciple

    lays his loving arm

    round your wrung mother,

    who brought you to birth.

Two other Marys watch and wait.

We meet you hanging there,

    head cruelly crowned,

    hands outstretched,

    pierced and pinned.

Flogged and forsaken,

    abused, scorned, down-trodden,

you’re drained and disjointed,

    fixed. Asphyxiated.

Your wounds are wound up

    in the torque of your torso.

The power of your spring

    holds the energy of God.

The watch is stopped - buried.

    The third day, it starts again.

The spring is sprung,

    power released into space and time.

The timing of the rising

    from the torque of the tortured.

(c) Graham Kings

4 Dec 2025, St Beuno’s Jesuit Centre, Wales

For the series of 7 Kabare carvings, by Benson Ndaka, and 7 poems, by Graham Kings, click here.