Blessed Good Friday

Pietà with Saints

1523-24
OIL on wood, 239 x 199 cm
Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

 

 

Pieta

Thus, Jesus, do I see your feet again?
Those feet which last time were a slender lad’s,
When timidly I bared and washed them here;
How they forlornly stood among my plaits
Like, in a thornbush caught, a milk-white deer.

So now I see your limbs, unfondled ever,
For the first time, at this our lover’s tryst.
We never in our time lay down together;
Now to adore and watch is all there is.

But look, your hands are mangled at the center – :
What bites, beloved – they were not my own.
Your heart is open, anyone’s to enter:
That was to have been my door, mine alone.

Now you are weary, and your mouth too wry
To have a longing for my suffering lips -.
Jesus, Jesus, whence came our eclipse?
How quirkily we perish, you and I.

(The Best of Rilke trans. By Walter Arndt)