Strange how one can sing and feel… nothing. Heart and soul rich in one’s voice, but no more than a façade, no more genuine than the pain etched on a figure sculpted in stone. Ugolino’s anguish is but the same cold marble as every other work sitting motionless in that sublime sunlit room. The bronze of the burghers feels no greater solemnity than any other bronze of Calais. So too my heart sits in a quiet chamber, unmoved by the emotion of my voice, untouched by the smile that adorns my face. Why so much embellishment? Tears and smiles are but the same jewels cast from the same source. The spring wells and flows, but does not irrigate the withering crop of an arid mind, nor wet the ashen palate of a silent tongue. Through the window I hear someone singing. Is it me? The voice alone is mine.
Month: June 2023
What Remains
In an empty house, an abandoned palace, a ransacked museum, what remains? Ash and dust settle where sunlight once pooled; like snow they blanket the spaces where tables once stood, where dresses once fluttered—in short, where life once lived. We live only once, or perhaps that is not true; some wise beings say we live a hundred thousand times, cycling through eternity, but in each life perhaps we feel that we live only once. And of a life once lived, what remains? And say life were to leave prematurely, through some miscalculation of the gods, say life were to leave before our bodies were ready, leaving a kind of half-life, a twilit state, an empty house that time has yet to destroy, an empty museum where memories haunt? What then? Sometimes I feel that life is lighter than a feather, a kind of kite we pull along, trusting that a fragile string will tether us to what makes us feel alive, tether us to the only thing that even nearly comes to touch the sky. But ash and dust float higher than kites when the wind sets them afloat, in a dance, a quiet dance that moths alone can hear. I hear the moths fluttering against my windowpane. They are beating their wings to the rhythm of two words: “What remains? What remains? What remains?”
Pages By Espresso 