The Vase

Like soft mist on a cold night
It stood in the fading light.
Catching reflections of the fading light
From velvet curtains to black grime.
Ethereal and yet so real
The vase stood, a sentry unparalleled.

* * *

He couldn’t believe what he created
From dark earth and a fiery kiln.
He didn’t touch it for the fear of stains
He stared at his reflection, in dismay.
The wrench his heart felt
When he thought of the hands,
That would caress this beauty
In some foreign land.
Break it……………..break it……………
His soul tormented,
Let not unworthy eyes rest on it
The echoes lamented.

Mud walls and a leaking roof
Scattered pallets, his only proof.
With a piece of silver they bought his immortality,
Drunk, he lay, staring at a vacant non-entity.

* * *

Pieces he finds, lost in the rubble,
A thousand years ago, somebody had stumbled.
His eyed fixed on the delicate veins,
Blue and gold with silver strains.

Shattered, like human past,
Gathered in pieces, the broken vase.
Whose hands did make, this mirage.
Made the mistake of making it a farce.

A broken man, a broken vase
Time doesn’t let such things pass.

* * *

Under the lights, in a glass case,
Fragile………..stands the vase.
Hungry eyes devour the detail,
The soul of a man, sold in retail.
Tormenting the echoes of words unheeded,
Poverty is what it pleaded.
The faint cracks no one sees,
What it was…….and…
……….what it could have been!