Something Beautiful In Sorrow

This area of the palace is more dilapidated than the rest, a juxtaposition with the sorrowful but beautiful age of the more or less intact rooms behind her. The rooms beyond are chatoci, barely recognizable framework. They are filled with rubble or wood and stone, areas scorched and blackened while others look untouched by fire, or untouched by anything at all in the ages. Empty birds nests are nestled in some fall pieces of woodwork or stone beams, seeds strewn in among weeds and threads but despite the thin layer of sunlight peaking in among them and the rain that must fall, there is no sight of greenery. Gothic arches over broken black-paned windows, long jagged edges pointing inward like splinter to a wound. Leaves wet and dry as corn husks litter the floor, floating on puddles or tumbling along. There are small scatterings of sand, but for all the crumbling rock, roof tiles, cracked and limbless gargolyles and empty black book shelves, there is of sign of life.

Text by Lucie MacAulay