Not For You Only

“New countenances float up shadowy from the depths of memory before, within and after history, and from you, they demand to exist and ask that you exist with them and become a saint with them, just as Vanghelis became a saint the day before yesterday. And it is not only the Martyrs who became saints through their own acts – Electra, Tatakis, Beloyannis, Ploumbides, Lambrakis, Petroulas, Diomedes- but also the others, the anonymous ones, the inconspicuous ones, the unpretentious ones, the homely ones, through the small sacrifices of silence, resignation or submission, or even solitary exasperation; and I feel the need to depict them and place them in my iconostasis of humble anonymous Saints, together with my Mother, Aunt Olga, Aunt Evyenia, Petros, Matha, Maria, Lefteris, Telis, Alekos, old Kyr-Kostas, Uncle Anaxagoras, Panoussis, Kyra-Smaragdo, Vanghelis, Anthoula: to keep the oil-lampion burning ever-vigilant in front of them, to name them one by one with veneration in my prayers; and I have a multitude of other icons to hang in the face of futility…”

Yannis Ritsos, Not For You Only, Iconostasis of Anonymous Saints
Translated by Amy Mims