Good Friday

It is the small hours1 now, and still the procession has not ended.The full moon casts, in a sad sky, an ashen glow.In front goes the shepherd, behind him walk the repentant.Some can go on no more: they go off to their homes, already spent.The most faithful stay on, behind the pallid corpse of the Christ.

Carrying the float go, at least, thirty men. Some boywalks along with his father, not understanding this is his destiny;that the day will come when—turned into a young lad—he will beg to carry the timbers of the sepulcher, redeemedby virtue of the pain, the weight, and the stones of the road.

The procession, stepping out a cross, advances slowly. With the tapers,and with a prayer, repeated on contrite lips,go the same devout women who arranged the lilies in the sepulcher,and in the casket of light laid down with tenderness the sorely wounded.I hear the song of mourning, spiraling upward to infinity.

In a crystalline amphora, the body of the Messiah lies outstretched.I look at him with fear; I contemplate his wounds behind the glass.Raising sores upon his skin, thorns crown his martyrdom.Other times I have seen him, and nevertheless I am still astonished:I still do not know why, so deeply, his torment overwhelms!

The float arrives, at last. At the doors of the church it has fallen asleep.In the crepe-paper flower, hung up that afternoon, are held captivesprays of frangipani, doves, and a whitish glow.It shudders, swaying to and fro: at last it opens its bud, before the sighof the flock, which admires, astonished, the drizzle of flowers.

Fleeting flutter of tiny flowers and snowy plumage!The tomb awakens, and passes through the great door with a lofty step.I go back home, holding my mother’s hand, half asleep.Tomorrow I will return to see how the breeze rocks in mid-airthe crepe-paper flower, and the sad doves in their nest.