The Vexation of Rosemond

Mahler’s 9^th Symphony reverberated the dimly lit room dressed in minimal décor. The walls were draped with no paintings, no trophies, no mementos; nor any pictures of juvenile misadventures, adulthood memories or flourishing offsprings.

The room stood bleak, blighted and blanched in a blend of blissful blankness. Rosemond was no war veteran, not an exemplary father, neither an epitome of philanthropy.

No colours decorated his coat, no flowers bloomed in his garden. Rosemond was not a leader of men… nor did he chose to follow… he preferred stagnancy, immovable dormancy…

A shattering cold storm waltzed outside with the music of swivelling branches and rustling leaves. Many a time and oft, shards of lighting stirred a crescendo in the torrential orchestra as Rosemond remained buried still on his massive chesterfield.

“How the gods play a horrisonous symphony on their harps, affrights and daunts even the most draconian souls. There is death and deconstruction in the air tonight, a stench of animadversion and rebuke, a foul powerful air of chastise, chagrin and choler goes in with my breath... but I feel a peculiar familiarity with them all”

“A familiarity, a tradition, of endless vexation and cold damnation. Of falling stars and souls ajar, of hearts black as tar. This night tonight, the rain outside reminds me… of a life I never cherished, where melancholy relished and endearment perished. Tonight when innocence trembles, my heart doth rumbles in hope for the baneful halberd of the Gods above, to quell us like doves... oh tonight I pray for love… tonight I pray for love… For who am I but a man of flesh, bone and sinew, vanquished to ash and hew, to be born anew.”

“This night I think, this night I sing a silent lay, hear the woodharps play, and put my fears allay. Kindred, Community, Authority… all have put me into dissidence, chafed my chest, mithered my mind and against all this must I recoil? 'No' utters my sanity… for never against such inhumanity I fought that blind war of vanity against this antagonism. I am an old withered lion against a voracious horde of hyenas…  I chose not be the sacrificial goat, so with a knife in my throat, I eternally doth float…”

“I am weak, perchance, that I never took a stance against this demon dance of my menial adversaries. Each day I grow wretched, each day I grow dolorous, and each day I grow weak to fight. One day these hyenas will gnash and gnaw, rake and claw, but hark to my words, the lion’s mane maybe grey, kill him, you may, but defeat him? Nay… through his corpse will emerge a thousand pangs to dress the empyrean, in a dark Cimmerian… for he is more perfervid than you and us, and he is thus, the ‘Anima Invictus’…”

The thunder outside roared in a million tongues, speaking to the afeared beholders in a Delphic jargon. Rosemond nodded and tapped his feet, Mahler made way for Stravinsky and Stravinsky for Mozart. Where dearth and dreariness reigned as rampant wintry wyverns, now seem to be usurped by a pair of zealous basilisks, full of belligerence and babel.

“Dishearten me not tonight, for tis the night you benight. Lead us to apostasy, lead us back to your womb and let not the winds of halcyon settle”

Rosemond got up, and twisted his frail figure towards the study, pulled down a curtain to reveal his most revered collection. A pyramid of old dusty manuscripts, novellas and poems. His Magnum Opus, his own Poetic Edda. Leaf by leaf, page by page he went through them all and scattered them on the floor.

“My will has finally shattered, beaten and battered. These endless pages of scribbled writings, shall celebrate my passing in a fiery amassing. A curse to those who ever read my words, a curse to those who remain unheard, a curse to this theatre of absurd. With my last words I lay this malediction, enter the deathly dereliction, and end my diction”

Rosemond closed his eyes, and fell chest first on the floor buried amidst his Magnum Opus. As the lights began to fade, and the deep malady of his lifelessness began to encumber his senses, Rosemond had one last passing thought.

“Will I ride the summer winds over bright dawns? Will I play the lyre of the dryads and the fauns? 

Will I be the benign dew of morning or will I be the malign rue of mourning?

Will death bring me elation or just prolong my vexation? Will there be strife and starvation or an eternal salvation?

Will I taste the nectar of motherhood???... Or did I never understood that even death can bring no good… even death can bring no good…”