Byzantine Gold Poem by gershon hepner

Representing saints with paint
is to the mind of moderns quaint.

When on icons lives are told
in burnished and Byzantine gold,

the haloes and the holy faces,
projected to the inner spaces

of the viewers, they don’t fill
the void for them despite the skill

of the artist, not believing
in immaculate conceiving.

“Very charming, ” they will say,
more impressed by those who pay

fortunes for contemporary
art, composed extempore,

where each image is despised,
faces can’t be recognized,

and brushstrokes should not correspond
to here and now, for far beyond

reality the artists search,
not painting idols for a church,

but idealizing their own mind
as by painting they unwind.

I wouldn’t say the concept differs
from what Byzantine art delivers

in icons, for iconoclasm
is one more means to paint orgasm,

no less intense than gilded paint
Byzantines use to paint the saint.