Darkly opaque as silhouettes,
the Myrtidiotissa's scorched face, the cindered
oval of her child's, are islanded in golden rays,
as if the immolating flames
that singed them both on Kythera
still hovered in reflection on the ikon-case.
It is as if, in her sublime serenity, inscrutable,
she knows the key to those eternal mysteries -
the miracle of birth, the enigmatic journey
through a life, death's sombre portal
to profounder light, the hope of renaissance.
Strewn petals blur in shrouds of incense,
timbre of Byzantine chant
rings the Epitaphios in lambent ripples,
haloed sound, while she prevails,
the Panaghia Myrtidiotissa,
so charred of visage as to seem immutable.
*
The ikon of the Panaghia Myrtidiotissa - the
Madonna of the Myrtles - takes its name from
a monastery on the island of Kythera. Although
the ikon was not destroyed by a fire which razed
the monastery, the features of the Mother and Child
were blackened by the flames. Replicas of the ikon
are housed in churches associated with communities
from Kythera.