his rough men shouldering a pathway to the gates.
The night before his trial, I dreamt of him.
His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt.
Then blood. I saw that each tough palm was skewered
by a nail. I woke up, sweating, sexual, terrified.
Leave him alone.I sent a warning note, then quickly dressed.
When I arrived, the Nazarene was crowned with thorns.
The crowd was baying for Barabbas. Pilate saw me,
looked away, then carefully turned up his sleeves
and slowly washed his useless, perfumed hands.
They seized the prophet then and dragged him out,
up to the Place of Skulls. My maid knows all the rest.
Was he God? Of course not. Pilate believed he was.
We are left with a complex, ambiguous conclusion. Though Procula has been declared a saint by the Eastern Church in Carol Ann Duffy’s version she doesn’t believe in Jesus’s divinity. The implication is that she regards Jesus as a mesmerising, sexually attractive man, the ‘someone else’ of the earlier stanza. 
 The final statement — at least Procula’s version — is that Jesus could not have been God because Pilate thought that he, Pilate, was God already. 
 Alternatively, it could be interpreted  ironically   as Pilate who believes Jesus is God. Pilate is therefore portrayed as a foolish man who would have been wise to take his wife’s advice and exert his power to stop the execution. The reader must speculate what personal, internal conflict might ensue for Pilate in the future if he believes that he crucified a divine being. 
  The reader is left to choose.
Pilates Wife