Echoes of a Forgotten Palette
There lies a village, nameless now, its timbers bent
By centuries of whispers. Stones, once warm with life,
Now cradle only shadows where the ivy cleaves
To hearths long cold. The painter came at dusk,
His satchel slack with pigments dried to dust,
To seek the face he’d lost in yesterday’s refrain—
A muse that fled when autumn stripped the lanes.
The road, a serpent coiled in ash and thorn,
Led him past thresholds where no lamps were borne.
Windows, blind with cobwebs, stared like vacant eyes,
And swallows nested in the bell-tower’s silent cries.
He knew this place—not as it stood, but as it gleamed
In memory’s frail forge, where golden roofs once streamed
With dawn’s first fire. Here, laughter rinsed the air,
And children’s breath drew frostflowers on the square.
Now rot had gnawed the lintels, left its gray caress
On every door. The well, where brides once pledged
Their hearts, held nothing but the moon’s thin face.
Yet still he walked, as pilgrims tread on hallowed ground,
His boots disturbing leaves that hissed like old deceit.
A gust arose—a spectral choir in the wheat—
And for a moment, just a moment, he could hear
The clatter of the mill-wheel, crisp and near.
He found the house. The one where she had dwelt,
Her hair a storm of dusk, her voice the melt
Of April brooks. The latch, though rusted, sighed
Beneath his palm. Inside, the air was dyed
With ghosts of lavender and yeast—a loaf
She’d baked still seemed to steam. He choked a laugh,
Then bent to touch the table’s scarred oak spine,
Where carvers’ knives had etched a child’s crooked line.
Upstairs, her room. The bedframe crouched, a beast
Beneath a shroud of moths. But in the east,
A square of glass remained, and through its grime
He saw the orchard—skeletons in time,
Their branches clutching rotted fruit like hearts.
Here, he had painted her. The violet smarts
Of twilight on her cheek, her hands aflare
With lilacs. Now, the walls peeled everywhere,
And where her portrait hung, a stain spread black,
A canker eating beauty, leaving lack.
He set his easel where the floorboards groaned,
Uncorked the phials of ochre, sienna, bone.
The brush trembled—not with age, but with the weight
Of summoning a face love could not resurrect.
He mixed the hues of memory: a stroke of dusk,
A daub of laughter, ground from shadows’ musk.
The shadows watched. They crowded close, their breath
A rustle through the rafters, murmuring death.
Night fell. The moon, a cataract, poured through
The broken roof. He worked as madmen do—
Fingers smeared with ultramarine and ache,
Eyes blind to all but visions they must break
Upon the canvas. Now her brow took form,
A crescent hint of tempest, now the warm
Curve of her throat, which once had arched to meet
His kisses. Now the lips, half-parted, sweet
As figs. But as he reached to fix the eyes
(Those twin abysses where his soul once rose),
The paint congealed. The bristles snapped like spines.
A wind lunged through the room, snuffing the tines
Of his lone candle. In the dark, the smell
Of linseed oil turned rank, a stagnant well.
Dawn found him frozen, canvas streaked with gray,
The pigments crusted where his tears held sway.
He stumbled out, the village now a sieve
For fog. The churchyard’s leaning stones did sieve
His thoughts. He traced the names the rain had cleft
To moss. No stone for her. She’d left, bereft
Of epitaph, the night the fever came—
A thief that took the village child by child, then flame
Consumed the cure. He’d been away, his art
Begging for coin in cities, while her heart
Stilled in the sheets they’d shared. He never knew
Until the crows had picked the fields clean through.
Three days he wandered, sketching ruins, roots,
The carcass of a loom, a pair of boots
Outgrown by time. Each stroke a futile plea
To bind the present to what could not be.
At the brook’s edge, where willows trailed their grief,
He saw her. Not a wraith, but like a leaf
Caught in the current—there, then swept beyond.
He plunged his hands, but found the water fond
Only of reflections. Rising, he beheld
His face—a stranger’s, cracked and eroded, held
Together by the frost. The palette slipped
Into the stream, its rainbows quickly stripped
To mud. The brushes followed, one by one,
Their hairs dispersing like a setting sun.
On the fifth morn, the village breathed its last.
A gale tore through, unmaking all that passed
For permanence. The painter watched the tiles
Take flight like gulls, the chimney’s slow defile
Into a cairn of rubble. When the dust
Had settled, something in him knew he must
Become what he had painted: shadow, void,
A figure swallowed by the canvas’s avoid.
He dragged his easel to the cliff’s sheer drop,
Where sea and sky engaged in their cold war.
No more the patient daubs, the careful light—
He hurled his tubes against the rocks, a bright
Explosion of carmine, viridian, gold,
A final carnival before the cold
Embraced him. Then, with all his remaining breath,
He sketched upon the air her face. Beneath
His feet, the cliff eroded. As he fell,
The wind became her whisper. What befell
The body, none recorded. But they say
The waves that day wore hues not of the bay,
But madder rose and saffron—as if the deep
Had swallowed sunsets never meant to keep.
And in the village (though no soul remains
To tell it), when the winter moon attains
Its zenith, shadows lengthen into forms
That pause beneath the lintels, where the storms
Have failed to scrub one fresco from the wall:
A girl with lilacs, and beyond it, all
The aching blue of skies that never fade,
The price of beauty, in eternal arrears, paid.
