Today's Poem: And Ran Away Naked

A sonnet by Maryann Corbett

Betrayal of Christ, with a soldier in pursuit of Mark the Evangelist, Antonio Correggio, circa 1522 (Wikimedia Commons)

A poet and translator with a Ph.D in medieval English literature, Maryann Corbett spent thirty-five years working for the Office of the Revisor of Statutes of the Minnesota State Legislature before returning to a scholarly and literary vocation. She is the author of six full-length books of poems, including The O in the Air in 2023, and has translated works in Latin, Old English, French, and Old Occitan. The recipient of many accolades, including the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the Richard Wilbur Award, Corbett is a frequent book reviewer for such publications as the Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Today’s poem by Corbett homes in on a small, strange moment in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark: that torchlit melee in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the small hours between the Last Supper and the cock-crow t…