UK Pagan
The Painters Tale
Written by Dazza, read by Icarus
Upon a rocky island far across the sea
There lived a lonely painter - board and palette on his knee
And all the day he sat there painting images of mind
A gentle man, a quiet man, a painter who was blind.
And there he had a cabin made of local stones
Built three score years and ten before to house his ageing bones
And there he kept his pictures - the ones he never saw
Of peace and love, of beauty and the bitter tints of war.
But then one day a ship did come to that island of the blind
With men who brought the old man news of the world he'd left behind
And he took them to his cabin and opened wide the door
To show them all his works of art that lay upon the floor.
And when they saw his paintings their hearts were filled with joy
For they saw he captured heaven in the eyes of girl and boy
They saw images of beauty, they saw images of peace
And their eyes were filled with the dewy tears of emotions sweet release
But the paintings there of slaughter and the atrocities of man
Did cause their souls to tremble and from the hut they ran
Then bound they up the painter shouting 'Blasphemy!' and 'Lies!'
But the old man stood with head bowed down and closed his whitened eyes
The sailors torched the cabin and the stones did hiss and crack
And they took a cat-o-nine tails to the painters frail back.
Then they wrapped the old man's carcass in a square of sail cloth
But the blood it kept on flowing and it filled the men with wrath
Their anger turned to fear then as the blood did cease to flow
For where the stains had filled the cloth a picture there did grow
And the picture was of thirteen men dressed in tar's attire
Standing round a small stone hut that was ablaze with fire
Down on trembling knee they fell their faces to the skies
But even as they prayed and cursed a mist did fill their eyes
And blinded now they staggered round groping rock and tree
Till twelve of them did fall at last into the wine dark sea
And the one remaining soul that stood upon the rocky isle
Did seek the Gods redemption upon his sins so vile
And suddenly a painters brush appeared in his left hand
With paint and board and palette all around him in the sand
Then a new stone cabin he set about to build
And realised with joy that his last prayer had been fulfilled
Then taking up his instruments he painted although blind
The sorry tar sat painting all his images of mind
And somewhere on that island the painters sitting still
Drawing images through sightless eyes untouched by age or ill
And all the time you see his works whene're you close your eyes
And you see his thumbnail sketches in the clouds that fill the skies
So look and learn with heart and mind the beauty he creates
And let his love and sorrow replace your fear and hate
And you will see the message this man of sand redeems
For his canvas is your mind and his paintings are your dreams.
Released under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0) Copyright for these works is jointly held by The original author of the work, its reader, its producer TwoFiftyEight Limited (UK Pagan). Each party holds copyright for their individual contribution to the work. All have concented to release the work under the Creative Commons License.