Chants to the Iconoclast
From the lost chronicle of the Cliff Hermitage, carved in the western rock, in the waning years of the Iconoclast strife.

Chant I — Cloister
And when the strife of images was ended, there remained upon the cliffs a brotherhood apart —
men of solitude, whose prayers rose from stone and shadow.
Their monastery clung to the rock, half cave and half wall, where the wind sang like the breath of the earth.
They set no icons upon their walls, nor did they carve the likeness of saints.
For they said: “The face of the divine is formless, and the formless is all.”
And the Council of the Church cast them out, blotting their names from the rolls of the living.
Thus began the silence that was their worship.

Chant II — Anathema
From the cities of men came word of curse.
The bishops spoke, and the ink of their anathema fell like blood.
Yet within their hanging cells the brothers sang still —
psalms of nothingness, of unlit flame, of eternity without form.
The world forgot them, but the mountains remembered.
The judgment of the Church mattered not to them,
for the truth lay above all else, beyond man’s law and fear.

Chant III — Pilgrim
In the season when the cliffs are veiled by mist, there came one who sought no blessing.
A traveler, cloaked in ash, whose eyes held neither life nor sleep.
He knocked but once, and the gates opened as if by unseen hand.
He spoke no word, yet the elder welcomed him as one who had long been expected.
And in the night, when the vigil began, another voice rose among them —
deep as the earth, cold as the grave, yet calling with a sweetness none could resist.
And the stones themselves began to tremble, as if aware of him.

Chant IV — Descent
When dawn came, the pilgrim was gone.
The brothers stood bare before the altar, and a darkness beyond night covered all things.
They gathered to pray, though no light answered them.
As the shadow spread from wall to wall, their voices did not cease;
yet the echo carried something strange, unseen, beyond time.
The Cliff Hermitage remains, half stone and half silence —
haunted still by the one they never knew.

(Kalamata, Greece 2025)