The Painter’s Last Eclipse
A weary painter treads the stones where ivy-strangled urns
Hold whispers of a splendor lost to time’s unyielding grasp.
The temple’s arch, like fingers frail, clasps dusk within its clasp,
And every step resounds a dirge through corridors of air
That hum with ghosts of hymns once sung by lips no longer there.
His brush, a wand of hollowed bone, his palette drained of hue,
Seeks solace in these ruins where the veils of worlds wear through.
No mortal fire lights his gaze, but famine for the flame
That once did crown the sainted brows of artists bound to fame.
“O crumbled shrine,” he sighs, “unfold thy secrets draped in dust—
Grant me the vision prophets saw, or let my soul combust.”
A wind, as from a throat unused to speech, breathes through the vines;
The pillars stir like slumbering gods, their faces veiled with lines
Of glyphs that pulse with verdant light, as though the very stone
Had drunk the essence of the stars and made its flesh their throne.
Then, shimmering where no moon fell, a figure takes its frame—
A woman wrought of twilight’s sigh, her voice a without name:
“What fool intrudes upon the loom where fates are spun to thread?”
Her form, a ripple on the dusk, no feet to touch the spread
Of petals bruised beneath her tread, yet real as pain’s keen edge.
“I seek,” he stammers, “but a spark to bridge the mortal ledge—
To paint the breath that moves beyond the cage of bone and breath.”
Her laughter spills like shattered glass, a requiem for death.
“The price for such a stolen glance no mortal purse can hold.
Wouldst thou carve open rib and soul to barter with the old
Dark currencies that govern tides between the seen and dreamed?”
He meets her gaze—a starless night where constellations schemed—
And nods, for in her phantom hands, he glimpses hues unborn,
The pigments of eclipséd suns and skies by tempests torn.
She leads him through the arch’s maw, where time dissolves like rain,
To chambers hung with tapestries of joy distilled to pain.
There, canvases of living flesh stretch taut on beams of yew,
Their surfaces a writhing storm of visions pushing through.
“Here,” murmurs she, “the damned and blessed have knelt to ply their trade—
Each stroke a sip of Lethe’s draft, each shade a decade paid.”
He lifts his brush; the bristles sear with frost and fever’s clash.
The first stroke bleeds a rose that wilts mid-bloom, its thorns turned ash.
The second draws a serpent’s coil, its eyes twin voids that plead.
The third etches a child’s last breath, a soul not yet freed.
She watches, still as midnight’s core, her form now waxing clear—
Her features sculpted from the void, her eyes two suns austere.
“Thy hand is true, yet falters where the abyss demands its toll.
To fix the dance of dying light requires ceding whole
The fragile lens through which thou seest love’s ephemeral guise.”
He pauses, feels the temple’s pulse throb hot in wrists and thighs,
Then plunges deep the quivering brush into his own torn chest,
And paints with life’s vermilion flood the masterpiece oppressed.
A sunrise fractures through the vault—a gasp of gold and blue—
A knight’s last stand, a mother’s wail, a chalice brimmed with dew
That quenches not, a shipwreck’s groan, a kiss that brands the cheek,
All woven from the hues that leak where heart and silence speak.
The temple quakes; the specter kneels, her luminance grown dim,
For mortal hands have birthed the dawn no god could hope to skim.
Yet as the final stroke descends to seal the sacred rite,
The painter’s breath unravels like a kite clipped from its height.
His fingers, stained with borrowed time, grow cold as temple tiles,
While she, who fed on artists’ throes, begins to weep in styles
No living tongue could name—a sound of stars denied their course.
The canvas drinks his final sigh, then fades to ghostly force.
Now pilgrims sometimes swear they glimpse, where moon and shadow wed,
A figure painting fevered dreams with brushes forged of dread.
But lo—when dawn’s first blade descends, the temple stands alone,
Its stones still hung with portraits bleached, their anguish turned to stone.
And in the winds that moan through cracks, a warning lingers sharp:
“The cost of piercing beauty’s veil is etched in blood, not harp.”
