The Painter’s Last Temple
A painter wandered lone, his soul stripped bare by war,
Through ashen fields where Silence reigned, a spectral bride,
And winds bore whispers of the rot that Time could not hide.
His brushes, dry as bones, lay dormant in their case,
Their hues eclipsed by smoke that choked the sky’s pale face.
He sought a spark to wake the slumbering flame within,
A fragment of the sacred ‘midst the mortal din.
There loomed a temple, ancient as the stars’ first sigh,
Its columns clawing at a bruise-purpled sky.
The archway, gaunt and cracked like lips that begged for rain,
Seemed both a tomb and cradle for forgotten pain.
He crossed the threshold where the dusk pooled thick as blood,
And trod on mosaics shattered by the Flood
Of marching boots, of cannon’s ire, of man’s disdain—
Yet here, one moth-winged moment, Beauty dared remain.
High in the nave, where sunlight pierced like broken vows,
A figure stirred—a soldier, crowned with fevered brows,
His uniform a tapestry of mud and thread,
One hand pressed to his breast as though to staunch the red
That seeped through cloth, a slow and ever-deepening bloom.
The painter froze, caught between wonder and the tomb,
For in that wounded stranger’s eyes, a twin flame leapt—
Two artists here: one shaped in lead, one shaped in breath.
“You paint the world’s corpse,” spoke the soldier, voice half-air,
“While I carve epitaphs with shrapnel’s fleeting flair.
What brings you to this shrine where even gods have fled?
Seek you the face of Grace before She turns Her head?”
The painter knelt, his palette trembling like a child,
“I seek the light that lingers when all else is defiled.
Your wound… it weeps the very hue I’ve chased in vain—”
“Then paint it quick,” he gasped, “ere Honor rots to Pain.”
Beneath the dome where frescoed angels peeled to dust,
The dying and the dreamer forged a pact unjust:
One gave his life’s last crimson to the other’s art,
While War, that ravening bard, chanted its bitter part.
The painter dipped his brush in tides of mortal red
And traced the soldier’s soul upon a canvas spread—
Each stroke a dirge, each line a elegy in ink,
As shadows stretched their claws and day began to sink.
“Look here,” the soldier murmured, fingers cold as clay,
“Upon this wall… my childhood’s ghost still dares to play.
I carved my name at ten, when these stones breathed with priests…
Now blood writes over blood, and feasts become fasts’ beasts.
When you paint Paradise, leave space amidst the glare
For hands that plant, not rend; for earth that cradles, bare…”
His breath collapsed like towers in a burning wind,
And Silence took the seat where dialogue had been.
Night fell, a velvet shroud stitched through with bullet holes
Through which the stars dripped light on broken aureoles.
The painter worked till dawn’s grim blush reclaimed the east,
Transfiguring agony to sacramental feast—
A portrait not of man, nor god, but of the Wound
That gapes beneath all strifes, primordial and profound.
When soldiers came at morn, their boots despoiling psalm,
They found him still as death, the canvas in his arms.
“What fool wastes final breath on shades?” their captain sneered,
And struck the panel with his blade’s unhallowed spear.
The canvas split—and lo! From that rent heart there poured
A flood of scarlet tears the hue of hope devoured.
It stained the temple stones, it pooled around their feet,
A mirror showing each man his own soul’s stark defeat.
The painter smiled, his eyes twin voids where Reason slept,
“You’ll drown in what you’ve spilled…” he whispered… then he slept.
Now in that ruin, when the moon bleeds vaprous gold,
Phantoms of brushstrokes gleam where none dare be so bold
To lift a hand in art or anger. Travelers say
The walls still weep their crimson towards Judgment Day,
And in those tides, half-seen, two faces drift entwined:
One forever painting, one forever enshrined,
Their tragedy etched deep in War’s eternal scroll—
That Beauty’s cost is measured in the weight of Soul.
