The Orphan’s Lament: A Sylvan Requiem

His cheeks, once touched by springtide’s faint auroral blush,
Now wear the pallor of moonflowers crushed to mush,
While eyes like twin wells where drowned stars yet faintly gleam
Search root and rock for traces of a shattered dream.

“O sylvan labyrinth!” he cries, “Unseal thy lore –
What cradle rocked my infancy? What shore, what shore
Received my mother’s final breath as waves roared loud?
What clay received her essence ‘neath this very shroud?”

The wood replies in susurrous of leaf and wing,
A chorus of lost voices murmuring:
“Child of the mists, seek not the veiled sun’s harsh glare,
But rest thy brow where shadows kiss the poisoned air.”

Yet onward presses he, where will-o’-wisps deceive,
Their azure flames through cypress boughs at midnight weave.
Three spectral maidens clad in raiments of the rain
Appear where elderberries bleed their scarlet stain.

First sister’s hair cascades like molten silver streams,
Her fingers pluck the chords of half-remembered dreams:
“Behold!” she sighs, “Thy mother’s face in water clear –
Lean close, dear wanderer, let memory draw near.”

He kneels, enraptured, o’er the spring’s deceptive face,
Where ripples shape a smile of melancholy grace,
But as he reaches, fingers break the liquid spell –
The vision shatters to a thousand mute farewells.

Second sister’s voice resounds like autumn’s dirge,
Her cloak a tapestry of grief-woven splurge:
“Thy father’s valor forged in battles long since past,
Now crumbles ‘neath Time’s wheel – all glory’s but a blast.”

She parts her cloak – there gleam bright swords reduced to rust,
Standards of gold now moth-eaten chains of dust,
A helmet’s hollow gaze where spiders spin their woe –
The orphan’s tears fall hot upon these lies below.

Third sister, veiled in night’s impenetrable guise,
Extends a hand where starless emptiness lies:
“Come, little seeker, lay thy burdens in this urn,
And all that haunts thy waking hours shall cease to burn.”

But lo! From tangled thickets bursts a hart snow-white,
Its antlers crowned with beams of spectral lunar light,
That parts the trio’s mist like dawn’s first righteous blade,
And with its silent gaze bids trembling boy evade.

Through bracken, thorn, and marshes thick with sorrow’s reek,
The mystic creature guides his steps, though never speak,
Till dawn’s first blush stains eastern skies in hues of woe
Where stand two gravestones ‘neath a yew tree’s withered bough.

“Here sleeps,” the wind intones, “A love no vow could keep,
Whose hearts, once bound, now lie in Death’s unending sleep.
The plague’s fell kiss did part them from their newborn dear,
Who wailed unheard three nights till woodsmen chanced to hear.”

The orphan falls to knees where roots like serpents coil,
His fingers trace the weathered stones’ forgotten toil –
“Amelia” one sighs, “Edward” the other moans,
Their letters eaten by two centuries of stones.

Then rises from the earth a mist of memories lost,
A vision of the fever’s toll, the parents’ cost –
A mother’s final lullaby choked into coughs,
A father’s sword-calloused hand grown still and soft.

“Take back thy gift!” the orphan wails to listening wood,
“This truth that poisons more than falsehood ever could!
What use these names carved deep in unremembering stone?
What use this lineage when I weep here all alone?”

The white hart bows its head, its glow begins to fade,
While through the glade now creeps the forest’s ancient shade.
The gravestones crack, the yew tree sighs its last defense
As earth reclaims the proof of his lost innocence.

Now something shifts within the fabric of the glen,
The very air grows thick with time reversed again.
His fingers pale like smoke above a snuffed-out flame,
His memories unraveling – no two the same.

First flies the scent that once he swore was mother’s hair,
Then fades the lullaby that haunted midnight air,
The orphan’s name itself now crumbles into naught,
As forest’s curse enacts what centuries have wrought.

He stumbles blind through trees that mock his childlike cries,
While roots erase his footprints ‘neath conspiring skies.
The ghosts that taunted now lament in whispered tones
This final tragedy – a boy bereft of bones.

At last where moonflowers press their lips to poisoned streams,
He falls, a wisp of vapor born of shattered dreams.
No stone shall mark his passing, dirge nor mournful knell –
The forest claims its own, and all is rendered well.

Thus ends the seeker’s path where truth and dream collide,
Where mortal yearnings meet immortal pride.
The wood still whispers lies to those who dare intrude
On sylvan sanctums where all certainties are stewed.

Beware, oh mortal soul, the answers that you crave –
Some truths are but abysses masquerading brave.
Better to clutch illusions close as cherished friends
Than grasp cold revelations that demand your end.

Let twilight veil what daylight’s cruelty would rend,
Let shadows guard what clarity would cruelly mend.
The orphan’s voice now lingers in the evening breeze,
A warning sigh through weeping, everlasting trees.