After the Descent Among the Dead....

Greeting to the Risen One

When You rose, O hallowed, harrowed One,
it was not without your scars.
You come as one who has known hell;
You carry the memory deep within your eyes
and see it everywhere it lurks.

Let the trumpets be at least a little muted
in recognition that this victory is never won
without passages too difficult even to speak of
in the light of day.

Yet You come as one who knows also,
beyond the deepest reaches of any hell,
that mothering Dark
out of which all Light is born,
and you carry that, too,
in the sinewy lightness of your Gaze.

—Reflection on The Resurrection by Piero della Francesa