The burden of humanness (Denise Levertov)

   Maybe He looked indeed 

much as Rembrandt envisioned Him 

in those small heads that seem in fact 

portraits of more than a model. 

A dark, still young, very intelligent face, 

A soul-mirror gaze of deep understanding, unjudging. 

That face, in extremis, would have clenched its teeth 

In a grimace not shown in even the great crucifixions. 

The burden of humanness (I begin to see) exacted from Him 

That He taste also the humiliation of dread, 

cold sweat of wanting to let the whole thing go, 

like any mortal hero out of his depth, 

like anyone who has taken herself back. 

The painters, even the greatest, don’t show how, 

in the midnight Garden, 

or staggering uphill under the weight of the Cross, 

He went through with even the human longing 

to simply cease, to not be. 

Not torture of body, 

not the hideous betrayals humans commit 

nor the faithless weakness of friends, and surely 

not the anticipation of death (not then, in agony’s grip) 

was Incarnation’s heaviest weight, 

but this sickened desire to renege, 

to step back from what He, Who was God, 

had promised Himself, and had entered 

time and flesh to enact. 

Sublime acceptance, to be absolute, 

had to have welled 

up from those depths 

where purpose 

drifted for mortal moments. 

--Denise Levertov, 

Salvator Mundi Via Crucis, 

A Poem for Good Friday

Image source:  Rembrandt, Head of Christ (1648)

Poem source