Saul Balagura - Muse

I prefer the solitude
of mountain trails,
the remoteness of my studio,
the distant rocky canyon beckoning,
the little fluffy bird by my window,
the threat of all my previous paintings
staring at me from hidden corners,
the sorrow trail tiled with poems past,
the mere weight of my mind
traveling in time and space
soiling its wings with tears
and blood and walls,
to the sterile reality
of academic history
that so easily can desensitize
the spirit
to the sorrows of the world,
where ten thousand vacant sockets
fill the small rectangle
on a table marked "victims",
with no space left
for those horrid nights
preceding that final moment
when the last fix
of a tear-dried eye
is the cold gaze of death itself.

Saul Balagura Dec. 16, 1997