EPITAPHIOS

On 10 May 1936 the 27-year old Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos saw a newspaper photograph of a woman weeping over the body of her son, a Salonica tobacco-factory worker killed by police during a strike. Two days later the Communist Party newspaper Rizospastis published a long poem by Ritsos. Dedicated 'to the heroic workers of Salonika' and drawing on the 14th century Greek Orthodox Epitaphios Thrinos, the poem combines Mary lament at Christ's tomb with popular Greek folk traditions of resurrection and Spring to create a universal lament sung by every bereaved mother.