The Cursed Bard’s Last Ascent
Where jagged peaks pierce heaven’s frozen veil,
A youth ascends with quill in trembling hand,
His heart a forge where love and doom contend.
The mountain breathes its frost-bound requiem,
Each step engraves despair in crystal snow—
For he, the poet cursed by sibyl’s tongue,
Must choose betwixt his art and mortal bond.
Three winters past, when spring’s first blush was slain
By sudden frost that gripped his village fair,
He’d vowed to chain his muse to reason’s wheel,
Yet found his verses wrought misfortune’s seal.
Each stanza birthed a shadow o’er the hearth,
Each metaphor distilled to bitter wine—
Till she, his lodestar through this bleak travail,
Now languished pale as lilies ‘neath the shale.
“Dear heart,” she whispered ere his quest began,
Her voice a breeze through willow branches frail,
“Seek not the summit where cold spirits dwell—
Our fleeting joy outshines eternal hell.”
But in her eyes he saw the truth unspoke:
The poet’s curse no mortal could revoke
Save through that grim ascent to meet his fate
Where northern winds compose death’s symphony.
Through labyrinthine passes steeped in gloom,
Past spectral pines that clutch at pilgrim’s cloaks,
He climbs as tempests howl their derision—
The mountain tests all hollow supplication.
Ice-shards, like daggers forged in stellar fires,
Lacerate flesh that bears love’s crimson brand;
Each crimson droplet freezes ere it lands,
A rubied trail to mark where hope expires.
At daybreak’s blushing threshold, weak and torn,
He spies the ledge where ancients swore their oaths—
A glacial altar ‘neath aurora’s veil,
Where mortal breath becomes the wind’s lament.
Here, legends claim, the shackled muse may sing
One final verse to break the chains of fate,
But payment steep demands the suppliant’s soul
To balance cosmic scales with mortal toll.
From frozen scrip he draws time-yellowed leaves
Where ink once flowed like midnight’s ardent sap—
Now faded words, like ghosts of long-dead birds,
Bear witness to the vows he’d sacrificed.
“O frigid arbiters of art’s cruel creed,
Take back this blighted gift of poisoned song,
But spare the heart that beats outside my breast—
Let love survive when all my verses die.”
The mountain stirs. Ice shards like temple bells
Chime dire approval as the pact is sealed.
Beneath his hands, the parchment bursts to flame—
Not heat, but cold that burns beyond all pain.
His fingers blacken as the pages turn,
Each cherished line dissolving into smoke
That forms new constellations in the air—
Brief beauty born through ultimate despair.
As final leaf surrenders to the pyre,
A gasp escapes his blue-tinged, cracking lips:
Not incantation wrought in scholar’s tongue,
But her true name—a prayer, not sorcery.
The avalanche responds with thunderous roar,
White death descending on the crags below,
Yet as the snow-blind fury sweeps him down,
He smiles—for in the vale, a cottage glows.
There, by the hearth where rosemary and thyme
Still scent the air with summer’s memories,
His love awakes, gasping as bonds release—
The poet’s curse transmuted into peace.
She knows, before the village bells toll grim,
Before the search parties ascend the slopes,
That freedom’s price was paid in crimson coin;
Her tears carve channels through the ashen dawn.
High on the peak where eagles dare not nest,
A single frozen verse endures the storm—
Not ink, but blood preserved in ice’s keep,
A stark “Farewell” no melting sun will touch.
The villagers recount in hushed refrain
How art and love once warred ‘neath heaven’s gaze,
How freedom’s bittersweet, ambrosial draught
Is poured from chalices that mortals wrought.
And in the long, unyielding winter nights,
When northern lights perform their ghostly play,
Some claim to hear a voice both strong and clear—
No tragic verse, but laughter on the air.
While in her rocking chair by crackling flames,
She reads old letters with a gentle smile,
Her finger tracing words he never wrote:
The silent poem of his last gift bestowed.
Thus ends the tale of ink and ice combined,
Of sacrifice that conquers cursed chains—
The purest verse no parchment could contain,
Writ not in words, but in love’s sovereign name.
Let those who climb where star-crossed lovers stray
Mark well this truth etched deep in glacier’s heart:
True freedom springs not from unbounded flight,
But choices made in darkness… for the light.
