The Icon Painter
Heleanor Feltham

Lazarus the icon painter
Senior among the artists of Byzantium
Caught God in wood and gold
And filled the courts, churches and monasteries
With choirs of angels.

But there were those who said
The infinite could never be confined
Within the circuit of a golden frame -
Not even in the glittering tesserae
Of the great dome.

How can the living Word express itself
Through the dead medium of glass and paint?
(And when the hanging lamps supply the light
Through coils of blue-sweet smoke, and incense hangs
And shimmers in the air,
How easy to suppose the image smiles
And moves within a cloud of miracles.)

So Lazarus was branded on both palms
And scourged, and stigmatised;
Anathema cried out against him.
Those who would steal a part in God’s creation
Must also suffer in His crucifixion.

……But when they smashed the glittering reliquary
Did God hatch from the icon like an egg?