All audiences are shadows—
save the one
that hears through silence.
No matter
how thunderous your voice,
how gilded your name,
how flawless your form—
none of it reaches
the ear of meaning.
For only meaning
is the true witness—
the still eye
beneath the veil,
the pulse that listens
without applause,
without a face.
The others?
They glitter,
then pass—
flickers
in the theatre of vanity,
a noise to please the crowd,
not the soul.
But meaning waits
in the hush between words,
in the art
that bleeds unseen.
It answers
with remembrance—
long after
the curtains fall,
long after
the lights withdraw.
Only it drinks
from the well within,
where the artist
and the eternal
meet.
