Day 17 of Lent: March 24, 2025

This week on our Lenten Journey from Ashes to Alleluia we enter into one of the most well-known stories in the Biblical text.

The story of the Prodigal Son. While well-known it is a hard story and not one beloved by all. So, to get us thinking about it I wanted to share a poem that touches on this text. The ending in particular made we wonder my own answer to the question the poet poses.

Grace and Peace,

Clay

Portrait in Nightshade and Delayed Translation

In Saint Petersburg, on an autumn morning,

having been allowed an early entry

to the Hermitage, my family and I wandered

the empty hallways and corridors, virtually every space

adorned with famous paintings and artwork.

There must be a term for overloading on art.

One of Caravaggio’s boys smirked at us,

his lips a red that betrayed a sloppy kiss

recently delivered, while across the room

the Virgin looked on with nothing but sorrow.

Even in museums, the drama is staged.

Bored, I left my family and, steered myself,

foolish moth, toward the light coming

from a rotunda. Before me, the empty stairs.

Ready to descend, ready to step outside

into the damp and chilly air, I felt

the centuries-old reflex kick in, that sense

of being watched. When I turned, I found

no one; instead, I was staring at The Return

of the Prodigal Son. I had studied it, written about it

as a student. But no amount of study could have

prepared me for the size of it, the darkness of it.

There, the son knelt before his father, his dirty foot

left for inspection. Something broke. As clichéd

as it sounds, something inside me broke, and

as if captured on film, I found myself slowly sinking

to my knees. The tears began without warning until soon

I was sobbing. What reflex betrays one like this?

What nerve agent did Rembrandt hide

within the dark shades of paint that he used?

What inside me had malfunctioned, had left me

kneeling and sobbing in a museum?

Prosto plakat. Prosto plakat. Osvobodi sebya

said the guard as his hands steadied my shoulders.

He stood there repeating the phrase until

I stopped crying, until I was able to rise.

I’m not crazy, nor am I a very emotional man.

For most of my life, I have been called, correctly, cold.

As a student, I catalogued the techniques, carefully

analyzed this painting for a class on the “Dutch Masters.”

Years later, having mustered the courage to tell

this ridiculous story, a friend who spoke Russian

translated the guard’s words for me: “Just cry. Just cry.

Free yourself.” But free myself from what, exactly?

You see, I want this whole thing to be something

meaningful, my falling to my knees in front of a painting

by Rembrandt, a painting inspired by a parable

of forgiveness offered by a father to his lost son.

But nothing meaningful has presented itself. Even now,

after so much time has passed, I have no clue

what any of this means. I still haven’t figured out

whether or not I am the lost son or the found.

Copyright © 2019 by C. Dale Young. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 19, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.