The Cathedral’s Whispering Walls

He carries brushes dipped in night,
A palette streaked with stolen light,
His soul a canvas, cracked and thin,
Stretched taut by wars that rage within.
The air, a throat choked thick with dust,
Recalls the dead, the betrayed, the lost—
Each step he takes, the flagstones weep,
Their secrets buried, buried deep.

A spectral nave, vast and dim,
Unfurls its ribs to welcome him.
The altar, gaunt as bone exposed,
Wears lilies wilted, mouths half-closed.
He kneels—not prayer, but burden’s weight—
And sketches shadows, love, and hate,
When suddenly, a tremor stirs the air,
A breath of frost, a whispered *“There…”*

Above, the vaulted ceiling yawns,
A firmament of fading dawns.
A figure steps from fractured light—
A youth in uniform, snow-blind white,
His face a mirror of the painter’s own,
But softer, like a psalm half-sown.
No ghost, nor dream, but memory’s trace,
Etched raw in Time’s unyielding face.

“Brother,” he murmurs, voice a thread,
“You paint the living, I, the dead.
Three winters past, you left me bound
To trenches where no light was found.
You fled to canvas, I to mud—
My final plea drowned in blood.
Yet here, where silence carves its toll,
I haunt the chasm of your soul.”

The painter’s hand, once firm, now shakes,
As ash-like tears scar marble flakes.
“I searched for you in every hue—
In cobalt skies, in ochre dew.
They told me you were slain, erased…
I swore to make the world taste
The grief that choked my every breath—”
“And yet,” the specter sighed, “*I* chose death.”

A gasp—the air turns sharp as blades.
The lilies crumble, void of shades.
“I carved my name in bullet’s song,
Too frail to bear the abyss long.
You think your art could resurrect
The boy who craved the void’s respect?
My bones are notes in war’s foul hymn…
Your guilt, the brush that drowns my hymn.”

The painter reels, his chest a storm,
As centuries of cold take form.
The youth extends a hand, translucent, thin—
A moth’s wing traced on violin.
“Come, see the truth our childhood hid:
The mural where our fate was bid.”
They drift like smoke through crypts unknown,
Where roots of stone drink blood alone.

A wall emerges, stained, defaced,
Yet blazing with a vision graced—
A fresco vast, alive, unspoiled,
Where two boys race through spring’s green coiled.
Their laughter blooms in every stroke,
A world before the cannon spoke.
But lo! Between the branches, lurks
A shadow shaped like poison’s work:
A crow with eyes of shrapnel shards,
Its claws outstretched, their fate unbarred.

“Our hands built this,” the ghost intones,
“When these halls echoed with our tones.
We swore to guard this hidden tale,
But war, like ink, makes virtues pale.
You left to chase the world’s false light,
I stayed to fight the endless night.
The crow’s our pact, now rotted, grim—
You forgot. I… *became* him.”

The painter falls, his cries a flood,
As brother’s blood stains brother’s mud.
“Forgive me—I was blind, afraid…”
“Love dies not with the grave,” he said.
“But flesh forgets. Now, let it end—
Redeem the artist, not the friend.
Complete the mural, tear by tear,
And let my name *disappear*.”

Dawn claws the glass, a bloodied streak.
The ghost dissolves, voice frail, oblique.
The painter, trembling, lifts his blade—
Scrapes his brother’s name, self-betrayed.
Each stroke a dirge, each chip a scream,
He kills the boy from memory’s gleam,
Till all that glows, where shadows thrived,
Is one crow, monstrous, half-alive.

He steps back, gasps—the fresco bleeds.
The crow’s wings swell with ancient greeds.
Its beak, a scythe; its cry, a blast—
The cathedral shudders, foundation vast.
Stones crack like hearts, the roof descends,
As Time and truth collide, transcend.
The painter smiles, arms spread, resigned—
“At last, our masterpiece… entwined.”

The walls collapse in silent roar,
Entombing art and guilt and war.
Where spires pierced the indifferent sky,
A crow takes flight—no elegy.
And some swear, when the moon is thin,
Two voices laugh, freed from their sin…
But stones remember what men erase:
The boy who loved, the crow’s embrace.