The higher figure is St Stephen, early adopter

of the faith and stoned to death as martyr,

some say the first – with Paul of the epistles

joining in, when he was merely Jewish Saul.

Either way, a big day for them both.

 

Stephen’s face and hair is modern, a touch

Girls’ Own – not like the second, these eyes

stare from oriental lids, like semi precious stones.

He is Christ Pantocrator [yet another Word

Of God, and not another Christmas show,

though Christmas was indeed His first]. And that

is all we see of him. His mouth is covered

by Stephen’s hand, as if some secret was not

to be divulged, some miracle unuttered. To see

the sacred messenger held back is, to say the least,

unorthodox. A mystery of faith for any competent believer.

 

But scholarship repairs, explains all doubts, delivers.

Here we have two pictures from different times

and schools. Starts as a painted ikon for a church

which finds the figure of the saint its inspiration.

Some time later the martyr gets made-over with

a Christ, in some smokey workshop where they gild

the portrait till it shines with riches’ holy light.

 

For a century or so, the face beatifies a castle,

and the world is in its place. Then war and revolution burns,

its owner martyred by soldier atheists who also fire

rounds into the sacred face and toss the picture

in the mud to meet a trampled end, unfaithed.

 

But you cannot keep a good man down. Especially

Him. The picture’s taken up and hidden. For years

it dares not speak its name – then discovery appears.

It’s mud-engraved, and 3 bullets have left

stigmata on the staring Christ, but restoration

starts. With surgeon skills the holes are healed,

the stained and crusted background cleaned and rubbed away.

The revival soon reveals the older figure buried there

– the youthful face, the auburn hair – and as the hand

appears above the Mouth of God, the rest of Him

becomes a Cheshire cat , and rescue stops.

Should you remove the Son in favour of the Saint?

So an image of a silenced Christ remains, a sort of

collage to an age of doubt, to answer only for itself.

 

The picture hangs in Ostroh’s University – an ante-chapel

of a simple church – its history displayed. Its message,

layered by the days and times it’s seen, speaks out

the ironies of what may be believed and not, of conflicts

unresolved, of words that struggle to break free.