Somoshree Palit
“Tell the king, the wondrous hall has fallen. No shelter has Apollo, no sacred laurel that
foretells; the water that had so much to say is heard no more. It is finished.”
– The Last Delphic Oracle, 362 AD –
One dusky morn I came upon
A lawn I chose to hate,
All rusted red with a weeded bed
Lay the dead collector’s gate.
The creaking stairs drew me upstairs
As a snake ensnares her prey,
To a hollowed ground, a hallowed ground
And round and round it lay –
The Collector’s Attic. Long ago,
When Birnam woods were green and wild,
Some say – and they vouch they know,
How the dead collector was once a child.
Up I went, my forehead bent
A vent I found at last.
The attic boasts of nameless hosts
Ghosts of seasons past.
No one knew the Collector drew,
A very few would pry
And in the urns of mortal burns :
He churns a golden sky
Of deathless blood. Inside the room,
A canvas with a mountain high
Bloomed, and in it’s peerless bloom
I saw all gods, all religions die.
The lords of war were playing gods
And gods were playing men
A tyrant god – almighty lord
Ravished a pagan glen.
“Heathens! Heathens! Heathens all!
Heathens! Heathens everywhere!
We are the Heathens of your fall –
Your Brutus might be anywhere.”
These words were scribbled on the wall.
These words were slashed in a golden pen.
These words had covered the entire hall;
These words were the blood of immortal men.
The canvas stretched the very room –
The attic grossed in Nyx’s soul.
The painting smelled of divine gloom
I saw the image of mankind roll.
A man with tarnished golden hair
With shaken hands had drawn that land
Maybe God’s Brutus was waiting,
Waiting at the witness stand.
The painting stared into my eyes.
The painting began to eat me whole.
The ancient gods I heard their cries
The attic sucked me off my soul.
The dead collector had drawn a pride
Across the wall of collective sin
The mirror cracked from side to side
The dead collector’s skeletal grin.
Morning mourning mirror and me :
With stygian eyes and teeth of lead,
My Golden god of ecstasy,
Ichor! Heathen Ichor is red.
I saw the beginning and the end
I saw the wrath where I belong
The painting was what the gods amend –
It was a mirror all along.
It was a mirror all along.
It was a mirror all along.
There’s no wrong way to be holy :
And it was a mirror all along.