Pieta

Thou, Womb-Manger, hold me still
Thou, oh Covenantal Ark.
Bind now my falt’ring will
And, in Pieta’s embrace
Look, with thine mothering face,
Upon thy broken once sung lark.

Soft singing, I upon thee gaze,
Holding close His broken frame.
Three nights, from antediluvian days
In dark clouds veiled tearing eyes,
Thy piercéd heart in bosom rise
To see thy sleeping Son so named

“King of Jews.” He to thee clung
And nursed the milk from queenly breast,
Now upon thy lap is flung
A battered corpse, pustuled thews.
His hands in blood still held by you
Clasped to His mother’s heaving chest.

“Oh Christ!” cry we who look upon
His nobly crowned and beaten brow.
But thee, oh Ark, who hold thy son
And gently rock his mottled corpse
Still now, in mothered love’s discourse,
with shaking arms won’t disavow.

Sweet tears, Theotokos, weep;
Anoint thy child’s anointed head.
In tender arms, His frail form keep
And rock gently, thou, Manger-Womb,
Thy Son in mother’s arms. Entombed
The priest, the prophet, King now dead.

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