The Apotheosis of Solitude

PART VII: And dream of sleep

For days after that fateful night in the theatre, I remained in bed. I could not summon the strength or will to rise. The thin curtain remained drawn, veiling the bright living world beyond the window. Day and night and day again passed in the rhythms of the ever beating heart of that world. But in the darkened cloister of my room, my heart had stopped. My mind emptied of all thought. Silence.

I did not hate her; how could I? How could I hate her for living, for being?
I did, however, hate myself. I hated myself for letting it go so far. For not having the courage and confidence to stand before her and speak. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have made any real difference; she loved another, always had, and nothing I could have done, said or written would have changed that. Nothing I could have done.
Nothing.

I thought to renounce everything. To negate the world, myself, everything. The bright, cold rage made manifest in the point of a knife which I could draw slowly into my own heart and stop it forever. Is that madness? Is it madness to want your suffering to end?! Even if that means ending your life? Perhaps it is no more madness than yearning for something you will never have. At the beginning of this, I told you that it was hope which drove me to do everything that I did. But when the hope is gone and only the yearning is left; only the desire without hope of satiety…what then?! What do you do then?
I thought about how easy it would be to make the final decision. And how difficult it would be to carry it out. It isn’t like going to sleep. However it happens, death; by your own hand or by other means: is violent agony. Your organs shut down, the blood slows to a trickle, but your mind goes on. You feel and experience everything. And you fight for everything. In the aching chasm beyond the final breath there is nothing but the terrifying need for just one more. What if that need goes on for eternity? What if that need is all that is left of you in the end?
And thereafter…what? How long would it take for my body to be discovered? Days? Weeks?? Months?! How long would it be before the smell were such that someone would come to complain? Would anyone come??
I wept at that. Would anyone come?? I wept at how small and pathetic my life had become; how small and pathetic I had made it. No-one would come, I knew.

The curtain remained drawn. Yet still, in the streets beyond my window I could see the faces of several young women; mascara blackened tears marring their beauty: their dishevelled hair dyed the colour of candyfloss in deference to their heroine.
She has died, they cry. She has died giving joy to life.
I throw the curtain aside. The sun is gone, but it is not night. The stars have slipped away and the dark rainclouds refuse to wash the earth of its grief.
She lies in her coffin, that singer; that artist whose very name describes my loneliness.
Some of the women cover her porcelain face and pink hair with a veil of white lace; as I cover the world, once more, with the veil of the curtain. The sun, the stars and the world slip behind it once more.

I must go to her. I must see her one last time.

I cannot see her. She is already shrouded in the hungry earth.

I must go.

I climb the hill to the graveyard, walk the path to her grave and stand before the wreath-strewn mound under which she lies.

When I first heard the news, in my despair, I cried out to her from a great distance: utterly removed and yearning…always yearning.

Now I am here. She is beneath my feet. And I can whisper.

This is only our third encounter. There are no songs. No words. No cheering crowds. There is nothing but the cold night, the wilting flowers and the hungry earth.
I lay upon the earth; upon the soft bed of flowers above her bed.
I close my eyes. And weep.

My eyes open. Still I am weeping. My pillow is wet with the tears.

I rise from my bed; sit at my desk: and write.

Words.
Words are all we have. As poets, as artists, as humans.
Words are the things we use to fill the spaces between us.
If used honestly; with genuine intent: they can be used to build bridges.
More often than not, we merely use them to build walls.
Some of those walls; if built by great artists: shaped and crafted into beautiful and towering cathedrals can stand for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And, perhaps, that is what we call poetry.
Literature. Art.
Stories…for want of a better word.

I have one more story to tell. One more tale of a poet and a lady…

End of Part VII.