The Temple’s Sigh: A Lament in Stone
Where ivy clasps the pillars like despair,
A temple stands, its grandeur now displaced,
Its marble cracked by time’s ungentle care.
Through archways moans a wind both cold and sage,
Whispering tales of glory long decayed,
While shadows dance upon the faded stage
Where once bright throngs in reverence once prayed.
Here, ’midst the ruins, walks a soul in white,
A woman veiled in sorrow’s ashen hue,
Her eyes, twin pools of twilight’s fading light,
Reflect the anguish only lost hearts knew.
Her name, a ghost upon the breeze’s breath,
Her past, a dirge that lingers beyond death.
Each dawn, she treads the corridors of stone,
Her fingers tracing glyphs of ancient tongue,
As though their lines might mend what fate had sown,
Or resurrect the song her heart once sung.
The frescoes, peeled to fragments on the wall,
Depict a tale of love and vows betrayed—
A queen, a knight, a chalice, and a fall,
Their colors dimmed, their meaning slowly frayed.
Yet still she gazes, searching for a sign,
Some key to break the curse her bloodline bore,
For in her veins, the weight of dead gods’ wine,
And in her chest, a wound that bleeds no more.
“What secret sleeps beneath these hallowed tiles?”
She asks the dusk, her voice the tempest’s sigh—
The temple hums, but keeps its cryptic wiles,
And stars, like tears, ignite the barren sky.
One eve, a wanderer with weary feet
Stumbled through gates where brambles choked the path,
His cloak adorned with dust of lost retreats,
His face a map of sorrows’ aftermath.
He saw her there, a specter ’midst the shades,
Her grief a melody he yearned to know,
And in his hand, a scroll decayed with age,
Unearthed where rivers of the forgotten flow.
“Fair spirit,” spoke he, voice like rusted chains,
“What binds thee to this realm of dust and bone?
I bear a script that murmurs of thy pains,
A missive penned in ink long turned to stone.”
Her breath, a flutter ’gainst the silent air,
She turned, as roses turn to meet the sun,
And in his palm, she glimpsed her own despair—
A seal unbroken, words she’d left undone.
“Three decades past,” she wept, “beneath this dome,
I pledged my heart to one whose soul was light,
But war’s foul trumpet summoned him from home,
And left me here to guard love’s sacred rite.
‘Wait for me here,’ he vowed, ‘till winter’s end,
When blossoms crown the hills beyond the fen,
But if I linger where dark stars descend,
Seek not my ghost, nor mourn what might have been.’
Yet springtimes ten have melted into frost,
And still I kept my vigil, cold and true,
Though hope, like petals, withered and was lost—
This scroll… Oh, speak! What tidings dare it brew?”
The stranger’s throat grew tight with unspent tears,
His fingers trembling as the parchment fell—
“Thy knight, alas, in twilight’s bloodied years,
Did fall where ravens feast on battle’s swill.
This letter, meant to fly on mercy’s wing,
Was trapped in earth by treachery’s cruel hand,
While thou, fair martyr to affection’s sting,
Hast dwelt in shadows none could understand.”
The world stood still. The moon, a pallid disc,
Withdrew behind a shroud of clouded shame,
And in her breast, a cry no heart could risk—
A sound that held no shape, yet bore a name.
She clutched the scroll, its waxen seal now split,
Her eyes devoured the lines her love had traced,
Each word a thorn that pierced the flesh of myth,
Each lie exposed, each truth in haste erased.
“My dearest heart,” he wrote, “forgive this blade
That severs bonds more sacred than the sky,
For though my soul to thee alone was pledged,
A king’s command hath sentenced me to die.
Not war, but courtly spite hath cut my breath,
And thou, my love, art safest in thy wrath—
Forget the vows we made, defy this death,
And let thy heart not tread my bloodied path…”
The parchment slipped, a leaf in autumn’s grip,
Her laughter rang, a chime of shattered glass,
While somewhere deep, the temple’s stones let slip
A groan, as though the earth itself might pass.
“So all these years,” she whispered to the void,
“I nursed a truth that falsehood had defiled,
My faith, a jest for cruel gods to enjoy,
My life, a page where ink and bile compiled.”
She rose, a statue carved from grief’s pure fire,
And climbed the stairs where moonlight dared not tread,
Her gown, a sail that caught the night’s desire,
Her hair, a storm unleashed from reason’s thread.
The wanderer cried, “Stay! Let sorrow rest!”
But she, already halfway to the spire,
Where gargoyles leered with malice in their breasts,
And winds hissed dirges through the fractured choir.
“The truth arrives too late,” she called, her voice
A blend of iron velvet, soft and stark,
“What use is light when darkness is one’s choice?
What song can mend a symphony embarked?”
Then, from the tower’s edge, where time suspends,
She spread her arms like wings that never flew,
And stepped into the void where anguish ends—
A swan in descent, kissed by death’s first dew.
The stranger found her ’neath the bloodied dawn,
Her form at peace amidst the crushed jasmine,
A smile played where once despair had drawn—
Her soul now free from history’s discipline.
The temple, as if mourning its own flesh,
Let loose a sigh that shook the roots of earth,
And where she fell, a single snow rose bloomed,
Its petals pale, imbued with second birth.
Yet none would know the tale those blossoms keep,
Of love delayed, of truths that tombs retain,
For temples fall, and even stones must weep,
When destined hearts are damned by time’s disdain.
Now wanderers who brave the moon’s pale stare
Speak of a voice that haunts the western tower,
A murmur soft as petals in the air—
“No truth survives the tyranny of the hour.”
And in the dust, where two names intertwine,
A rose persists, though winter claims its hue,
A monument to vows that could not twine,
And skies that weep where wings no longer flew.
