IV In the Shadow of Salieri

I drank from my soul before I poured it into words,

Ah! Such sweet bitter nectar.

Silence spoke through the splinters of time

When time was all there was,

Idly comforting my long-lasting solitude, he said—

Well... who remembers what said he, it does not matter,

He does not matter, for he’s always around, and I, I

Too, am always around.

Here, in the black nest of solitude

While pen drips my blood into these pages,

Bright, fluid, into these pages, for a glimpse,

Only,

As it swiftly turns rotten.

Though seldom, though swift; upon reading,

These words, they rush, and we, we live again.

These precious rotten heaps fermented a lifetime

Now crawl onto my frail legs,

Sustained, only, by beauty.

Ah, yes, so he spoke, “Show me a shred a beauty,

And I’ll give you a full, bursting heart.”

Alas, companion, like all others you are;

Beauty, here, around us; though dark,

Though rotten of kind, still,

You fail to see.

There is a galaxy within me, and within me

Sprouts through all that which is unknown.

And gave it, did I, I gave it all throughout my time

As my breast expanded, more, more;

All trifling and vain, yet, still,

I am what makes me more, and I am what makes me less.

I, barefoot and hungry, have roamed the cosmos,

And fashioned words out of stars, and spread them;

Nebulae, who’s beauty the Angels covet.

Yet my path of roaming entranced me, ravished me to love

To lose and to suffer —and all I loved, I loved alone,

And all I suffer, I suffer alone.

Love? Ah! Yes, Love.

How did my blood flow for it once?

Here! I’m sure it is here.

Yes.

“Those who feel the most love the hardest,

Those who love the hardest, love not themselves.

Those, who love not themselves, love not one another.”

Those who feel the most love the hardest,

Those who love the hardest, love not themselves.

Those, who love not themselves, love not one another.

Rubbish.

I, in my darkness, lay unhinged.

With the single scent of all my years.

With the shadow that lurks around me.

With the shadow that lurks around me!

The shadow which lurks in the shadows?

The sha...

Is ...

I die?

I DIE! I DIE! DIE! DIE! I DIE!

AT LAST, OLD FRIEND, YOU’VE COME, HERE, I DIE!

COME, SIT, POUR COFFEE, LET US CONVERSE.

LET ME HEAR YOU, I BEG, AT LEAST FOR A BREATH.

I’VE LISTENED FOR YOU, A MYRIAD BEFORE.

TELL ME, I BEG, OF HOW MUCH YOU CRAVED ME,

OF HOW MUCH YOU’VE YEARNED, TO TOUCH,

TO SIT BY ME, BUT COULDN’T BEFORE.

DIE! I DIE! AT LAST, I DIE!

LET US REJOICE. At last, I die!

— — — —

You’re not there, are you?

No.

Silence; — — — —

— — — — — — — — —

— — — — — — —

— — — — — — — —

— — — — — —

— — — — — — —

My path of roaming entranced me, ravished me and left me bare

Where two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And knew why people shunned it.