The Temple of Unwhispered Hues
A pilgrim treads on cobbled moss, his shadow lost in haze.
No name he bears but *Artist*—a soul with colors chained,
Whose brush once danced on mortal air, now stiff with scorn ingrained.
The path, a serpent coiled in mist, ascends to fractured stone,
Where columns clutch the clouds like ribs of gods long overthrown.
Here, silence wears a crown of thorns; the wind intones a dirge,
And every step etches his fate on parchment of the verge.
**”Behold,”** he whispers to the void, **”this sanctuary’s core—
A canvas vast as roving stars, where dreams may bleed once more.”**
But ivy cracks the altar’s spine, and frescoes, peeled and pale,
Stare down as spectral judges from their dim, ancestral vale.
He unpacks hues—crimson’s lament, the cobalt of unshed tears,
A gold that shivers like betrayed vows from younger years.
The temple’s heart, a cavernous womb, inhales his trembling light,
As shadows coil like serpents ‘round his ankles, poised to bite.
**First stroke:** a vine of sapphire curls where mortals carved their wars,
**Second:** a moon, half-sliced and shy, on ceilings none adore.
**Third:** a face—not his, not theirs—a ghost with eyes undone,
That gazes through the artist’s flesh as though he were the sun.
Days melt to weeks; the rain becomes his sole communion’s tongue.
He drinks from pools where nymphs might weep, if nymphs still dwelled among.
His hands, now stained with twilight’s ash, conjure worlds unseen—
A flock of starlings forged from rust, a queen with jade between.
Yet nights arrive when doubt, a rat, gnaws soft beneath his sleeves.
**”What hands will trace these splintered walls? What eyes dare read my leaves?”**
The temple, ever mute, replies with echoes of his breath,
A hollow hymn that spirals up to flirt with heaven’s death.
Then—
One eve, as ochre bleeds into the horizon’s throat,
A stranger parts the curtained fog, her cloak a twilight mote.
No words she speaks, yet in her pause, a century’s refrain:
The weight of unsung symphonies, the chill of unclaimed rain.
**”You paint,”** she says, **”the language drowned when earth was still a sigh.
But colors here are funeral shrouds—they bloom to only die.”**
Her fingers graze his muralled ache, a touch like phantom snow,
And in her wake, the pigments writhe, then dim to afterglow.
**”Who judges art,”** he pleads, **”when walls outlive the artist’s name?
When temples fall to fickle winds, yet crave their dying flame?”**
She smiles—a crack in porcelain—and fades with dusk’s last sigh,
Leaving him chained to whispers of an unconfirmed goodbye.
Now madness, subtle as a moth, alights upon his reason.
He paints not for the eyes of men, but seasons beyond season:
A cataract of frozen screams, a rose with roots in hell,
A child forged from shattered glass who rings a phantom bell.
The temple, once a silent vault, begins to hum and ache,
Its stones alive with fevered pulse, each fissure wide awake.
The artist’s breath, now ragged verse, syncs to the ancient hymn,
As ceiling cracks sprout veins of light, the air a thickening hymn.
**”At last,”** he gasps, **”we merge, my soul and yours, dear leviathan!
Let my blood be the final brush, my bones the bridge to span—”**
But thunder cleaves the symphony; the rain descends in blades,
And painted saints weep mercury as the nave bows and fades.
Down crash the arches, splintered teeth of some primordial beast.
His palette, shattered, stains the earth—a sacrificial feast.
The stranger’s voice, now fifty strong, chants from the storm’s cruel core:
**”You gave the grey a transient soul. Now sleep. We guard your lore.”**
Beneath the rubble’s embrace, his lips shape one last hue—
A shade no mortal tongue may speak, nor sky dare to construe.
The temple, sated, drinks his dusk, and in its veins, it flows,
Till dawn exhales a world where neither he nor it quite… goes.
Years later, shepherds trace the trails where wildflowers conspire,
And spy through weeds a spectral glow, a heart that never tires.
They speak of walls that shift at dusk, of whispers through the stones,
Of melancholy’s masterpiece, etched deep in ash and bones.
But art, when born of souls unbound by time’s relentless grind,
Leaves no epitaph for passing hands, no creed for those who’re blind.
The artist’s name? A wisp of mist. His work? The temple’s sigh.
And beauty, ever tragic, dwells where love and ruin ally.
