The Crumbling Sentinel’s Last Vigil
A ruined city sleeps, its glory long unkept—
Its spires, like broken bones, protrude from earth’s embrace,
While whispers of the past drift through each crumbling space.
There stalks an ancient man, his back by grief bent low,
Through labyrinthine lanes where ivy dares to grow.
His eyes, twin pools of dusk, still hold a fleeting spark,
As though they guard the ghost of fire within the dark.
He pauses by a well, its stones with moss o’ergrown,
And hears a phantom choir in winds that rasp and moan.
“O Margaret,” he sighs, her name a withered leaf,
That once was sung in spring, now borne by autumn’s grief.
A locket, cold and tarnished, clasps a face long gone—
A smile etched in gold, a dusk’s outliving dawn.
The plague had claimed her breath, yet he, by fate’s cruel twist,
Lived on to tread alone where shadows coil and twist.
But lo! A sudden cry—a child, frail and fair,
Stumbles through shattered arch, with wildflowers in her hair.
Her cheeks, though smudged with grime, recall a rose’s hue,
Her voice, a trembling brook: “Good sir, I beg of you…
The brigands chase me close—oh, hide me in your cloak!”
The old man’s parchment hands, by instinct, cradle hope.
He sweeps her ’neath a stair where darkness clots the air,
While boots like thunder crack the silence, grim and rare.
“What fool would shield the brat?” a rasping voice demands,
As steel grates stone nearby. The child grips his hands.
The old man feels her pulse, a sparrow’s frantic beat,
And time dissolves—he sees Margaret, pure and sweet,
Who once had clutched him so when death’s chill shadow fell.
His soul, a bridge ’twixt past and present, breathes a spell:
“Go, child—to yonder crypt, where ivy masks the door.
Wait there till moonrise bleeds. Speak not. I’ll guard thy shore.”
She flees, a wisp of light through ruin’s gaping maw,
While he, with cane raised high, confronts the ravening law.
“You’ll tread no further here,” he growls, his voice a blade,
“This ground is hallowed dust where innocence is laid!”
A laugh, a flash of steel—the cane clatters, bereft.
The old man sinks, his breast by crimson rivuleft cleft.
Yet as his vision fades, he hears the child’s faint flight,
And Margaret’s voice, a star, dissolving into night…
The brigands, sated, leave; the moon ascends, a pearl.
The city, mute once more, lets silence softly furl
Around the cooling form that guards the sacred stair.
Two lives, by sacrifice, now thread the freezing air—
One fled to futures unknown, one clasped by the past,
Their fates a braided hymn to love that ever lasts.
And somewhere, in the gloom, a locket’s hinge lets go—
A golden face takes wing, through ruins, soft and slow.
