Stairs Shadows From The Past | Poetry Digital Paint (1994) Digital Arts by Gaboriau Gérald

Shadow of the Past

I climb the century-old staircase, whose ancient wood
Groans beneath my step like a Theban slave.
A sound—both present and absent—escorts my ascent,
While a phosphorescent glow, worthy of Eleusinian mysteries,
Emanates from the unwavering candle I hold in my hand.

A tutelary flame guiding me to the threshold of shadows,
Where the sacred porch of nocturnal arcana opens.
The music of darkness, like a score engraved in porphyry,
Unfolds its secret harmonies in clever counterpoints.
The grain of post-midnight, of incomparable softness,
Offers itself to the touch like the wave of Lethe to the ferryman’s fingers.

She stands, majestic as an ebony caryatid,
This night, ever faithful to its ancient vows,
Spreads its obsidian wings over the sleeping world.
Gigantic, it reveals to me the mysterious canvas
Suspended at the end of this endless corridor.

A spectral fog, dense as Hecate’s breath,
Wraps it in a silver shroud. My fingers brush it,
At the edge of my being, deciphering by touch
Its occult arcana, like an augur reading entrails.
How many destinies are recorded on this immemorial surface!

The canvas quivers, transforming into a chromatic magma
Where sounds and colors entwine like Pythonic serpents.
The fog fades, like morning mist over the Styx.
My fingers slip into this painting of infinite layers,
And I taste the metallic flavor of time gone by.

Do you those cobbled alleys you once wandered?
Your hesitant step, contemplating extinguished stars like funeral lamps.
Do you that night ing before your fixed gaze,
Dragging in its wake your ephemeral dreams like autumn leaves?
Do you those smiles you furtively stole,
Without anyone perceiving your intangible theft?

Those moments when you longed to proclaim your vital impulse,
But whose existence no one ever knew?
Do you those places you once haunted?
Now empty of your presence, like deserted temples.
Do you those nocturnal butterflies? That strange frenzy
That drove them toward the flame, like Phaethon’s disciples?

Those moments of eternity crystallized in ivory statues?
Those joyful fragrances and perfumes, those lights and dawns,
Harmonizing on the horizon in perfect architectures?
That gaping abyss you still dread,
The one of oblivion that swallows dreams as Charybdis swallows ships?

Those street lamps aligned like the columns of an Ionic temple
Along that river of ink, like the tenebrous Cocytus?
The nocturnal melancholy and all those worn-out words
Like old coins you dispensed to be heard?
All those times you contemplated the void, in absolute silence,
Like a mystic initiated into Orphic mysteries?

Those moments when you brushed against the Reaper, courting her somber beauty
Without her even being aware, like Eurydice ignorant of the gaze?
Those dark hours with moments of sublime clarity?
Those seconds consumed in apnea, as an offering to infernal gods?
All those hands, those locks of hair, those glances, those skins touched?
Those old clocks you drew inspiration from like mechanical muses?

All those paths taken, like Ulysses in his maritime wandering?
All those souls whose essence you captured
To savor better when Nyx spreads her dark veil?
That languorous affliction you cherish
Like a treasure stolen from Apollo’s sanctuary?

That solitude borne with the dignity of an Atlas,
Adjusting your emotions like a Phidian sculptor shapes marble?
The eloquent muteness of words, like the silence of statues?
Do you all this, engraved in the bronze tablets of memory?

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