The Last Supper

Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875–1926

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed round him, who like a sage resolved his fate, and now leaves those to whom he most belonged, leaving and passing by them like a stranger. The loneliness of old comes over him which helped mature him for his deepest acts; now will he once again walk through the olive grove, and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them, and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees) their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves upon his word: they fly across to him; they flutter, frightened, round the supper table searching for an escape. But he is present everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

[On seeing Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper", Milan 1904.]

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    I love that painting. This poem actually reminds me of that invisible conspiracy that now surrounds Da Vinci's rendition just because of the Da Vinci Code. Maybe Rilke knew something that we didn't. Wait, of course he did!

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