Totenklage

[Nullia]

I find that this world paints a very particular picture for me.

In terms of the arts, I am many things.
A musician, a dancer—I could sing if someone asked me to, mother said I was quite good.

I am not a painter.
But I think I have a kind of talent for seeing what it is someone intends in a work of art.
What someone means with a painting. How someone feels with a poem.
I find many, in this place, of lamentation. Of what was, of what could have been.
Of what no longer is.
I find that people lament even what is now.

But the people aside. It's days like today that the world itself paints me a picture.
On a canvas across my eyes, I see a myriad of things.
And I find that it all, generally speaking, reflects the same image as the people who paint inside it.
Today we won a war. I was sat where I am always sat, meditating as I always am.
Some time after the crowds left, which I confess I was not there to see,
A man returned and declared a portion of the result.
"What?", I thought. "Already? But they've only just set out."
So it was that, it would seem, we had obliterated the opposition.
No surprise to me per say, but I've never been a fighter. I might even be a pacifist.
And yet...

I find that no one is happy.

This painting is one of melancholy and lamentation still.

"He has been executed." I hear a distance behind me, briefly stirring me from my half-consciousness.
"Ah." I think. "Of course. He can't cause problems if he's dead."
But as a follower of the Ordinance, even if I've not yet introduced myself to the Church,
I find my thoughts linger. I find that I question the character of a dead man.
Not accuse. Question. Wonder, even. I muse on what led him there. From his cradle to his grave, I wonder what he was like.
But there is still no joy. The declaration meets silence. The conversation passes on to the next war. The next conflict. The next deaths to come.




Across my eyes there is a painting of the world.
I see fields aflame,
I see rivers red,
and I see legions of toy soldiers scattered across it, this painting. Not painted in, but rather laid on top. Balanced, even.
Some of them teeter close to the edge, over the abyss looming below my hypothetical mindscape.

I wonder about the value of a life that can't appreciate life.

I pray for you all, my little toy soldiers.
That whoever pulls your strings,
whoever beats your drum,
has mercy on your souls.

May you become something beautiful in your next life.

Ad astra per aspera.