I lay upon a grey bed, broken and battered – I don’t know for how long. It was a cold distant winter, with the great sun hidden from my skies as my aging spirit wandered the crags and crevices through the divine gardens. My colour was grey, my temples throbbed with abandon and my forehead burned as in a fever. Murky thoughts swirled around my mind, and pleading, cursing, I implored the Grey Lady to take me into her arms …
And then – suddenly – I saw the room to my door burst open, and there, gently, an Unpredictable entered.
I looked at her: her deep blue eyes seemed to contain the darkest of depths, the highest of symbolic peaks, the expanses of the seas and the deepest of mysteries. Her hair was long and blond, and she moved with the grace of a most heavenly seraph. The smell of sweet pomegranate wafted towards me from the most beautiful -- most tender of lips, her hands were fine and gentle as she stretched them out towards me. Had I ever seen something so beautiful?
Who was she? I don’t know. But I know that she was unlike any other Unpredictable I had seen before. Smiling and sweetly, she glided to my side, and kneeled, her hand caressing my cheek.
“My sweet … my poor, poor man. Why must you torment yourself like so?” She said to me. “Can’t you see how white your hair has gotten? How cold, clammy and sallow your skin has become? Cannot you see how much your poor eyes bulge out from their sockets and how your torments have marred your expression and twisted it into such a violent appearance? Don’t you see this? Am I not the one you have searched for? Longed for? Am I not the one you have dreamed of? Yearned for? Ached for? Here, here I am!”
As she says this, her hand stroked my long, scraggly unkempt hair.
“My sweet … come … come with me … my tender love. You love flights, summer days and deep seas. I know! I know you and I understand you.”
“Come! Come! I will take you far, far away, where water meets golden sand. We will sail upon gentle seas into the clouds that wander throughout the heavens. A glorious scent of divine madness will waft across our boat in a radiant dream, emanating from the great Unknown, and we will be happy – happy! The Sun will shine upon us, bathing us in an abundance of light, and there, I will strip my veil off for you and let you taste my fragrant scent and youth … And I will lay at your feet, and play a song with my lyre, the most beautiful song that could ever grace the heavens… We will have a bed of white daffodils that will never wilt, and we will be happy – happy!”
As the Unpredictable spoke, I had to be pale at that thought. As she spoke, she spoke without pause, her soft and tender voice was a melody that soared and flew, and her gentle words penetrated my mind like sweet, tender music.
My heart was moved, and my eyes were bathed in tears.
“Come, Come!”
Her deep blue eyes reached into my aching soul, as her hand stroked my cheek once more …
“My poor, sweet man … You are ill, very ill, and I can heal you or I hope I can …”
My bony, pale hands reached out to her to embrace her there and then, as moved as I was by her, wanting to grasp that blond crown and pull it against my panting breast …
“No … No. Not here. Not until we are there …”
“Come, Come!”
The night that followed was the worst I had ever been in. My fever burned an unending inferno and my colour was sickly and cold. My bones were weary, and my earthly torments gave me no reprieve. And yet, still, I followed her and together we wandered through that star-spun night, and then the whole morning together in silence. As midday neared, we reached the place where golden sand met the bluest of crystal waters. We boarded a boat and lay upon a bed of sweet daffodils.
And there ... the Unpredictable kept her promise … she slid out of the ruddy veil that concealed her radiance, her beauty, and naked and glowing in the glory of the sun she offered herself up to my hungry eyes. She shook out the curls of her golden hair, and grasped by the light breeze, they floated out around her, a glorious halo of a perfect angel. She then laid at my feet and took up her lyre and with the clarity and grace that I could only describe of as divine, she sang to me the most beautiful song that one could hear.
How it soared into the clouds that wandered throughout the heavens!
How it swirled and spun in a glorious crescendo that resonated deep in my mortal being …!
She sang while she gazed earnestly into my gaping eyes as if she was searching there for my soul …
She sang while she gazed earnestly into my gaping eyes as if she was searching there for my heart …
She sang while she gazed earnestly into my gaping eyes as if she was searching there for me – Me! …
I was overwhelmed, intoxicated by her … I kissed her savagely, fiercely on her moist mouth of that fragile rose.
Ah! Fatal kiss …
Her face turned pale, purple and blue, her eyes glazed over and the fire in her beautiful pupils spilled out and rolled as tears down her clear blue eyes as her adorable body stiffened in my arms.
She was dead!
Had I killed her? Had she wanted to die?
My muse is now shrouded in black, and my “perverse, accursed” lyre plays dirges at my own funeral. A veil of black covers my emotions.
I know that my muse wishes itself to be free to once more traverse the paths that the largeur of summer blesses with herbs and flowers; but Fate, against which a man helplessly curses and roars against, has mortally wounded her. The flowers – the beautiful white daffodils – withered in her name, and the clouds which wandered the heavens dispersed – the boat that rocked upon the divine dream – and clasping the carcass of the Unpredictable, I fell into the void.
Today, a funeral procession treads the paths that encircle my soul. But perhaps – tomorrow, I too will be dead.
Now, tell me, how can I laugh at anything or anyone? Am I not alone in my sorrow? In my melancholy? I am a rose born in the field of death because I feel within myself the anguished and tormented moans of all the deceased.
Yes, I can still feel the warm tender kiss of the sun across my brow and the caresses of the wind through my hair, but my illness – my real illness – comes from the roots that still cling to the land in which I was born.
My illness is such that I now see the whole face of reality.
Unsatisfied, unhappy, therefore, with the world of fellow men, I have developed the need for a life that I could not live and perhaps none could live. My brow is marked with large black roses: the roses of death, the bruises of life …