The Lament of the Lone Voyager
A canyon’s grasp—its walls both steep and sheer,
There wanders one, by solitude led,
A voyageur lost to all but none’s ear.
The rocks entomb the echoes of his tread,
And shadows clutch, as day dissolves to drear;
No laughter breaks the desolation’s clasp,
No hand to hold within this cruel gasp.
Beneath a vault of cruel, unyielding sky,
The sun, a caldron cast in brazen fire,
Pours down its ore of heat, yet none reply
To hearts that beat with muted, strange desire.
The canyon’s throat, a sepulchral sigh,
Resounds the murmurs of lost fate’s pyre,
And on this stage of nature’s might and scorn,
The lone man walks—by bitter anguish borne.
His eyes, twin wells of time’s relentless stream,
Reflect the barren rock and arid stone,
Where once in dreams the verdant forests gleam,
Now choked in dust, the earth lies overwrought, alone.
He treads a line where hope becomes a dream
That fades like mist, in cold winds harshly blown—
Yet in his breast, a spark, though faint it be,
Flickers with fragile pulse of memory.
“O solitude,” he whispers to the wind,
“Thy cold embrace, a shroud about my frame;
Yet in thy arms no solace can I find,
But shadows’ mockery that knows no name.
What curse hath drawn me from mankind’s kindred bind,
To wander thus, forsaken, without claim?
What sin or fate hath stitched this cloak of night,
That blinds my soul from fellowship and light?”
No answer murmurs from the barren track,
Save howling gusts that scrape the canyon’s face;
No hearth, no voice to call the wanderer back,
No gentle hand to share his woeful grace.
The stone and dust weigh heavy on his back,
Yet onward still he moves with measured pace,
Each step a dirge, a cadence slow and sure,
A dance of grief he cannot disavow nor cure.
Beneath the heavens’ vast, indifferent glare,
He pauses by a pool, a silver shard;
Reflections dance, then shiver in the air,
As if the water held a dream unmarred.
But in that glassy depth so faint and bare,
No face but his own, by sorrow charred—
A visage drawn with lines of care and strife,
A map of long and weary-woven life.
“Why do you chase the fleeting ghost of dawn,”
He muses low, “Through every barren glen?
What phantoms haunt the deserts you have drawn,
That leave you wandering these wastes of men?
Is purpose naught but folly overborne?
Or is the heart condemned to break again?
Oh, to embrace the night without regret,
Than to endure the sun’s relentless threat!”
The canyon seems to answer in a breath,
Its voice a hush of stone and ancient dust,
A tale of those who met their silent death,
In search of meaning lost—ambition’s crust;
Their bones lie buried deep beneath the heath,
Forgotten souls enshrouded in earth’s crust,
Whose only epitaphs are whispered winds,
And echoes born where daylight never thins.
As dusk unrolls her sable tapestry,
The voyager wraps his cloak about his frame;
Each star a frozen tear of memory,
A spark extinguished by unspoken blame.
He chains his heart to fate’s harsh decree,
Yet yearns to whisper soft a mortal name—
A voice, a touch, a beacon in the night,
That might illuminate his woeful plight.
But none will come; the canyon keeps its claim,
A fortress grim where loneliness erects
Its throne upon the bones of hope and flame,
And casts the soul into its cold respects.
The wind, a mournful song without a name,
Beats down the empty hollows, and detects
In every step, the stubborn human grace
That lingers, though bereft of time and place.
The voyageur’s heart, a vessel cracked and torn,
Beats out a rhythm of profound despair;
A song that mourns the dawn that will not morn,
Entrapped in shadows that no light can bear.
Yet still he walks, through night’s consuming scorn,
As if the earth might answer one last prayer—
But solitude remains the final guest,
And silent is the canyon’s vast bequest.
Upon a crag, beneath the moon’s pale fire,
He sinks to earth with limbs of leaden chill;
No tender hand to soothe, no dream, no lyre,
To quell the aching void no voice can fill.
His eyes devour the stars’ cold quivering choir,
While in his breast a fading ember’s will
Burns through the night—a fragile, flickering breath—
Before it bends content to steady death.
Thus lies the voyager, lost and lone,
A specter carved by nature’s ruthless art;
No epitaph but wind’s mournful tone,
No hand to clasp, no echo in the heart.
His tale dissolves in twilight’s sable cone,
A testament to man’s estranged part,
In realms where isolation reigns supreme,
And life dissolves beneath a shadowed dream.
