An Invitation of Icons

An Invitation of Icons

Royal Rhodes

The gallery show of El Greco
makes pictures work like sounds
of pure form to wake something
answered in the blood,
like some unsigned icon.

Against a gilded ground
a mother mourns her adult child,
beautiful soldiers in spun-gold
chain-mail skirts skewer dragons
and heretical emperors.

Infirm monks crawl on their knees,
sit hunched, or ride a lion's back
to attend a dead hermit's body,
his face entirely gone, kissed away
by pilgrims in their piety.

And we attend to these murky figures
heaped in versions of bible tales
sold to monarchs or monasteries --
saints in perfect abstraction, staring
out between heaven and earth.

Each image scintillates with light
begotten from unbegotten fire,
suspending time, stretching the soul,
as cherubs with coral-pink limbs
tumble out of the gold eternity.

And one, half-scale, holy face
with features like droplets of flesh
and a mouth unsuited for speaking
follows you with large eyes, shadowed
and casting its own shadows.

He has read the black stories,
locked in your heart and your body.
In his impassive stare you return
to this window of the everlasting
that invites you to come closer.

---

Royal Rhodes
Poet

Royal is a retired educator who taught religious studies at Kenyon College for nearly forty years. He currently lives and writes in rural farmland. His poems have appeared in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Photography by Merve Sahin