The Wandering Bard of Cobblestone Veils
And whisper tales in twilight’s gentle breath,
A poet wanders, draped in dusk so deep,
Embracing shadows cast by weary death.
His heart, a tome of ancient elegies,
Beats slow beneath the lantern’s trembling gleam;
He, lover of the past’s soft memories,
Is prisoner to a vanquished, fading dream.
The walls around—an epitaph in gray,
With ivy fingers clawing time’s decay,
Recall the laughter that once filled the air,
Now swallowed by the silence of despair.
Upon the cobblestones, each step resounds,
A rhythmic dirge for moments long achived;
The echoes dance—a spectral choir surrounds,
A blur of life now lost, yet still contrived.
He pauses near the fountain’s stone embrace,
Where water murmurs secrets to the night,
His eyes, two lanterns tracing time’s pale face,
Reflect the stars that yield no guiding light.
“Oh, ancient street,” he whispers soft and low,
“Thy stones remember all I’ve sought to find:
The sighs of lovers long ago who know,
The ache that dwells within the mortal mind.”
His fingers trace the carvings worn by years,
Each notch a stanza of forgotten lore;
Through cracked facades and doors once bright with cheers,
He seeks the sunlight glimpsed in days before.
Yet shadows lengthen ‘neath the waning moon,
As memories dissolve in mists profound;
The past, a fading and elusive tune,
Plays softly, then recedes without a sound.
The poet’s mind—a labyrinth of yore—
Twists ‘twixt the realms of what was and what might be;
His soul, a ship that never finds the shore,
Adrift upon nostalgia’s mournful sea.
“Are we not all but whispers in the wind?
Ephemeral as leaves in autumn’s breath?
Born to cherish, soon to be rescind,
Our fleeting joys, succumbing unto death.”
A ragged voice within his breast replies,
A murmur rising from the depths of pain:
“The heart recalls what time may not disguise,
Yet yearns for what no hour shall regain.”
The lantern’s light grows dimmer in his hand,
Like hope dissolving in the winter’s frost;
The stone beneath, once solid, now unmanned—
Grim altar of the days forever lost.
He dreams of youth, a garden in full bloom,
Where laughter trickled from the summer’s height;
But dawn reveals a withered, twilight gloom—
The echo of a never-ending night.
Within his gaze, the cobblestones confide
Stories of those who wandered thus before:
A mother’s lull, a father’s weary stride,
Old voices humming through the ancient door.
Yet none remain—save dust and brittle stone,
Which crumble ‘neath the weight of years untold;
The poète errant walks the street alone,
His soul a shadow in the waning cold.
“Ah, vanity! The human heart’s cruel jest,
To cling to fleeting moments, frail and dear,
To seek in relics what cannot attest,
The inner truth that trembles ever near.”
Beneath the yawning sky, the stars retreat,
And silence falls like velvet on the square;
His footsteps fade beside the echoing street,
A ghost entwined with memories laid bare.
No victor does his weary pilgrimage claim,
Nor comfort springs from time’s relentless flood;
Only the ashes of a dying flame—
The bittersweet perfume of loss and blood.
In twilight’s arms, the poet bends and weeps,
For all the vanished faces long since dust;
The street a cradle where nostalgia keeps,
The heart’s revenant, mournful and unjust.
O’er cobbles lined with silence, dreams decay;
No hand to write new verse upon the stone;
The errant bard, ensnared in disarray,
Finds in the past a kingdom overthrown.
And so beneath the pale moon’s wan regard,
He treads the path where fleeting shadows blend,
A flicker lost in time’s relentless shard—
The final stanza of a tale unpenned.
Yet hear his breath, a whisper in the night:
“Though all is lost, the soul remembers still,
Each heartbeat’s murmur, every vanished light—
A human echo, haunting memory’s hill.”
There lies the poet, ‘neath the cobblestones’ sigh,
Embracing darkness where the past resides;
His verses fade like wings of some dim sky—
A fleeting presence, where eternity hides.
Thus ends the ballad of the wandering sage,
Who loved the past but found no solace there;
Beneath cold stars, ensnared in sorrow’s cage,
A silent mourner of the vanished air.
The Vieille rue, in somber dignity,
Retains his footsteps, echoes of despair;
A winding tale of mortal mutability—
The poet’s elegy breathed on the air.
