Kostis Palamas, in his poem “Daughters of Zion” from the poetic collection “The Immovable Life” (published in 1904), is inspired by the Gospel according to Mark the Evangelist, where Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome, who were “beholding from afar,” became witnesses of all the events that are referred to in the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus.
The poet calls these women blessed, who had the divine favor to hear from the mouth of the God-man “the secret sayings,” kissed His immaculate feet and wiped them with their loosened hair. They were the first who heard the joyful message: Christ is risen!
The poet calls these women blessed, who had the divine favor to hear from the mouth of the God-man “the secret sayings,” kissed His immaculate feet and wiped them with their loosened hair. They were the first who heard the joyful message: Christ is risen!
Daughters of Zion
(1889)
By Kostis Palamas
By Kostis Palamas
“And there were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome, who also, when He was in Galilee, followed Him and ministered to Him, and many other women who had come up with Him to Jerusalem” (Gospel according to Mark).
Fragrant roses of Jericho,
you scatter your perfumes in the Gospels;
you, with words unconquerable of faith and love,
speak to my unbelieving heart.
You are shaded by the cedars of Lebanon,
you are refreshed by the stream of the Jordan;
to Jesus Christ the eros of your youth
you bring myrrh, gold, incense.
To hear His divine, secret sayings,
and your longing and your care and your devotion,
kissing His immaculate feet again and again,
you anoint them within your hair.
Upon the Cross, as He was slowly fading,
you mourned His all-holy beauty;
in black were clothed creation, nature, the sun,
in black also your hearts below.
When, crushing the stone of His tomb,
the Lord illumined creation again,
you were His most precious creatures
whom He stood to greet first.
Daughters of Zion, equal to angels in portion,
crowned with the glory of the Lord,
I love you, because however much you were sanctified,
you remain always formed as human.
For within the God-man, I reflect,
who has taken all your heart,
you do not so much behold the power of God
as you feel His grace as man.
And from the almighty Word of Him
only the sound of His voice reaches you,
and with Him the desert is more radiant
than the heavenly throne of His Father.
Daughters of Zion, and the longing
that trembles within your pure breasts,
is for the Bridegroom, the martyr of the Cross,
more than for the Lord who rose.
Yet you made man
to be enthroned as God of gods here below.
Mary Magdalene — and the most beautiful
of all are you, you, His miracles.
And your glory appears more pure
in your solitary, gentle tear
than in the preachings of the Apostles,
than throughout the whole world from end to end.
To those same humble women of Zion, who received from Jesus His first resurrection greeting, who “very early on the first of the Sabbaths” came to the tomb to anoint the dead Christ with myrrh and found the white-clad angel who told them the joyful message: “He is risen, He is not here; behold the place where they laid Him.” Upon this miracle of the Resurrection are based the following verses of the poet:
It is not a tomb; the world is the one completed,
which gapes utterly empty and rolled away,
and is shown at last to you, a threefold adoration,
to you, Magdalene, Salome, and you, O Mary!
From your unimaginable blessedness
give to the earth, to every soul and every man,
every people, every homeland, every place!
Would that the unmoving stone of misfortune
be rolled away by the grace of a snow-white angel,
and the great dead and the beautiful dead
receive a life forever new!”
(“Resurrection Farewell”)
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
