The Painter’s Lament: Echoes of a Forgotten Hearth
A weary traveler trod where shadows merged with death.
His canvas, bare as winter’s unforgiving spine,
Sought hues no mortal hand could grasp or yet define.
Through valleys veiled in mists of time’s unyielding veil,
He wandered, lost unto a half-remembered tale,
Till stumbled on a path where brambles choked the stone—
A village, hushed and still, where silence reigned alone.
The cottages, like specters, leaned with splintered bones,
Their windows gaping voids where once had danced hearthstones.
The churchyard’s iron gate, unhinged by rust’s embrace,
Sang dirges to the wind that swept its hollow face.
Yet here, amidst decay, a tremor stirred his soul—
A whisper from the past, a fragment once made whole.
He traced the crooked lane where memory’s hand had led,
Each step a fragile thread through labyrinths of dread.
Beneath the crippled oak, a well of ancient lore
Gaped wide, its waters black as secrets kept in store.
He peered into its depths and glimpsed a phantom boy—
A child’s laughter, pure, untouched by time’s decoy.
The painter’s breath caught sharp; his heart, a caged bird’s cry,
For in that fleeting face, he knew his former sky.
The well’s dark mirror showed what years had stripped away:
The innocence of dawn, now shrouded in decay.
He fled the siren call of waters cold and deep,
To where the village square lay locked in ageless sleep.
A fountain, cracked and dry, where ivy claimed its throne,
Once flowed with liquid silver, melodies long flown.
Upon its edge, a name in weathered marble scored—
A craftsman’s hand, now dust, his legacy ignored.
The painter’s fingers brushed the letters, faint yet true,
And sudden tears betrayed the grief he never knew.
“Who mourns for those who built these stones?” the wind inquired,
As twilight bled to dusk, and hope’s last spark expired.
He turned to face the road that climbed the eastern hill,
Where once a cottage stood, obeying memory’s will.
The garden, wild and fierce, with thorns where roses bloomed,
Guarded a locket lost—in tender youth entombed.
There, ‘midst the nettle’s sting, a glint of tarnished gold
Revealed his mother’s face, by time’s cruel hand unrolled.
Her eyes, twin pools of warmth that once had lit his way,
Now stared through silvered glass, their vigor turned to clay.
The chain, though green with age, still clasped the fractured air,
As if her phantom neck yet bore the trinket there.
He clasped it to his breast, the cold a vengeful blade,
And sank to knees grown weak beneath remembrance’s weight.
The twilight deepened, cruel, as shadows danced their spite,
And stole the final glow that might have mimicked light.
Then, rising with a groan that echoed through the vale,
He faced the cottage door, now warped by rot’s travail.
The threshold, once adorned with lavender and thyme,
Exhaled a scent of mold, the stench of murdered time.
The hearth lay choked with ash, the table sagged, forlorn,
A chessboard set in stone where hope and despair warred.
Upon the mantelpiece, a clock’s skeletal face
Stilled hands that once had spun life’s fleeting, fierce embrace.
In corners, cobwebs draped their silken funeral shrouds,
While beetles carved their hymns in floorboards’ splintered crowds.
A child’s mitt, half-eaten by the moth’s desire,
Lay crumpled near the stairs, a ghost of vanished fire.
The painter climbed each step, each creak a whispered plea,
To chambers where his youth lay drowned in memory.
The nursery door, ajar, revealed a hollow nest—
A cradle’s silhouette, by shadows dispossessed.
Beneath the shattered glass of windows long since blind,
A tin soldier, steadfast, in rusted ranks confined,
Stood guard o’er painted lead, his colors peeled and faint,
His battle cry dissolved to Time’s unending plaint.
The painter’s trembling hand reached out to claim the toy,
But dust to dust returned—the soldier’s last deploy.
A sigh escaped his lips, a requiem unsung,
As night’s oppressive wing o’er all the village hung.
Descending to the hearth where embers once had glowed,
He struck a flint alight—the flame’s brief dance bestowed
A vision: mother’s hands, her needlework so fine,
Weaving threads of crimson through tapestries divine.
The fire snapped; she vanished. Darkness, vast and cold,
Swallowed every trace of stories never told.
He fled that maw of grief, the cottage door slammed shut,
Yet knew, as shadows laughed, his soul remained unglut.
Through streets now drowned in black, he staggered, blind with pain,
Till found the chapel’s cross, by lightning split in twain.
Its altar cloth, once white, now grey as storm-tossed foam,
Shrouded broken chalice, long estranged from home.
He knelt—not unto God, but to the void’s demand—
And poured his anguish forth in whispers unmanned:
“O Memory, thou thief, who giveth but to take,
Why rend the veil to show the heart what it must break?”
No answer came, save owls that mourned in ivied towers,
As midnight’s chill consumed the last of daylight’s powers.
Then, rising, he returned to where his journey swore—
The easel, blank and pale, beside the well’s dark maw.
With fingers dipped in shades of loss and borrowed breath,
He painted not the scene, but love outlived by death.
The mother’s locket gleamed, the cottage stood restored,
The soldier, proud and bright, his tinny sword still soared.
But as the final stroke descended, pure and stark,
A wind arose—it seized the canvas, bleached and stark,
And dashed it ‘gainst the stones where memories decayed.
The paints ran like the tears his pride had long delayed.
The village, through his art, had breathed one fleeting hour,
Now gasped its final truth: all beauty bends to power.
The artist, on his knees, beheld the ruin spread—
His masterpiece, a shroud; his hope, a thing long dead.
The dawn, in cruel ascent, unveiled the truth’s sharp blade:
No brush could resurrect what Time’s inexorable raid
Had stolen. In the light, the village stood revealed—
A carcass picked by years, its essence unrepealed.
The painter turned away, his soul a withered thing,
And left the locket nestled where the thorns still cling.
The path, now strewn with leaves of gold and scarlet hue,
Led onward—yet his heart remained, forever, true.
For though he sought new worlds, new skies to bend and break,
The village in his veins no earthly plea could shake.
And when, in distant lands, his name was praised with zeal,
He saw but shadows dance where love and loss congeal.
The final portrait hung—a face lined deep with years,
Eyes fixed beyond the frame, awash with unshed tears.
Beneath, a plaque of brass bore words he ne’er would see:
“Here mourns the man who loved too deep, yet could not flee.”
