Dedicated to the memory of Omer Moti, the late director of the Tel Aviv Musem who had envisioned an exhibition under the title “Cypress tree of memory”
At St. Kyrikos’
Behind Campos beach, in Patmos, there amidst the fields, there is a small cluster of trees. Cypresses, pine trees, lentisks and fig trees hide from one’s sight, in the company of birds, a small chapel in their bosom. Half stuck in the gap of the stone wall that encircles it, a dry branch, a small barrier, a big obstacle, the entrance. As we lift it, we set foot on the whitewashed steps and walk into the shade’s perfumed coolness. Devoted to patron saints Cyricus and Julitta.
So, on July 15th, St. Cyricus’ day, we came early in the morning carrying delights as a way of drawing close all those who cared, together with whatever is needed to share the Kollyva of remembrance for the departed ones we bear within us. First of all comes Matina’s name, who passed the chapel on to us, and remember also, Lord, those whom each of us calls to mind and all your people. I took care to bring with me a bottle of white brandy and small glasses for the bibulous cantor to clear his throat after chanting and for whoever else fancied it. The chapel is too small to fit the congregation; it can’t even hold ten souls inside. As it is, a small table is laid outside with the consecrated bread and the dishes of remembrance. And it is outside that candlelight trembles and the ceremony takes place. The big stones had been whitewashed the previous evening for the Vespers and all around us the place had been covered in small myrtle branches. Before mass is over some thirty or forty people had slowly gathered around us. Local ones, close neighbours most of them, wearing their best, their bodies betraying the signs of everyday toil. And lots of children, the three-year-old Saint Cyricus their protector. We took our place, Charoula and me, in the corner under the trimmed lentisk as the priest started the requiescat in pace, zealously echoed by Iannis, from Lagada, and Dimitrakis, the «candour».
Hardly had they started when two birds, hiding amongst the foliage, started singing away and got the better of the psalm singers. Father Nicholas raised his hand: Let’s keep silent, he said, God doesn’t need us. And so the service was stayed and we listened to the birds, for a long time, until they fluttered away. The sun had risen high; its light cleared, it gilded the harvested summer fields, which dazzled amidst the dim shade of the cooling trees around us.
It was as if The Axion Esti came to life before me and my knees went weak.
… celebrating the memory of Saints Cyricus and Julitta, a miracle burning threshing floors in the heavens, priests and birds singing the hail: Hail to thee Burning and hail Verdant, Hail Unrepentant with the prow’s sword, Hail who steppest and the footprints vanish, Hail who wakest and miracles happen, Hail…*
Cypress, tree of memory,
to Odysseus Elytis, who echoes paradise around us.
*For Elytis’ translation: Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris, The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1997.
