An empty canvas, white and wide,
He sits before it, brush in hand--
A silent battlefield inside,
No colors rise at his command.

The days dissolve, the mornings wane,
A blankness pressing on his mind.
He stares and waits for art in vain,
A masterpiece he cannot find.

But shadows creep as moments pass;
A single line, then two, appear.
A hesitant, uncertain mass
Begins to form--he draws near.

Each day he paints--by fate, by chance--
A patch of blue, a streak of red.
The brush moves on as in a trance,
By restless ghosts and visions led.

A figure forms amid the gloom,
A shape he does not recognize.
Still, he persists, ignoring doom
That flickers deep within his eyes.

The canvas fills, its silence breaks
With scenes he cannot understand:
A winding path, a rivers wake,
A grave dug deep within the land.

At last he sees, with trembling breath,
The portrait painted is his own--
A final vision, facing death,
His legacy in oil and bone.

He drops the brush--the work is done,
The canvas dark, the colors bled.
Day after day, the lines have run
Toward the truth he always fled.

Penned by my hand on the 18th of Daedalan, in the year 999 AF.