The Sculptor’s Winter

His hands, once deft as dawn’s first trembling light,
now chiseled forms the village dared not name—
a face too fair for their unseeing sight,
a heart too vast to fit their shriveled frame.

They called him mad, this sculptor of the lost,
who bent his back to marble’s mute lament,
while autumn’s rot and winter’s biting frost
ate through the eaves where lonely years were spent.

Yet in his hut, where embers hissed and sighed,
a woman’s laughter thawed the ice within—
Liora, with her hair like eventide,
whose voice could quell the tempests of his sin.

“Why carve these ghosts,” she asked, “when life remains?
The world beyond these hills breathes deep and wide.”
He traced her cheek, where firelight soft refrains
danced with the shadows only love could hide.

“The world,” he murmured, “is a hungering storm,
and we, but dust in its unfeeling tread.
Here, in this crypt where beauty takes its form,
I’ll shape a truth that outlives flesh and thread.”

But seasons turned, and coughs began to rack
her fragile frame, once vibrant as the spring.
Her cheeks, once roses kissed by summer’s lack,
now paled to lilies frost had withered thin.

The village leech, with herbs and muttered charms,
proclaimed her fate sealed in the earth’s embrace.
The sculptor knelt, his hands around her arms,
as though his strength could halt the void’s cold chase.

“There lies a tale,” he vowed, “in northern caves,
where ice preserves what time would dare efface.
I’ll carve your soul in grottoes none may brave,
and there, my love, we’ll mock death’s grim disgrace.”

Through blizzards howling like a banshee’s dirge,
he bore her wrapped in furs and desperate prayer,
to cliffs where ancient glaciers groaned and surged,
and air grew thin as hope, and just as rare.

Within the cave, where frost bloomed thick as flowers,
he laid her down on stone no sun had known.
“Sleep here,” he breathed, “where time holds no dark powers,
and I’ll etch life into this crystal throne.”

Days bled to nights, his mallet’s ceaseless song
a lullaby to keep the reaper’s blade at bay.
He sculpted not just form, but right from wrong,
her smile reborn in ice’s blue array.

Her hair became a frozen waterfall,
her eyes, two pools where moonlight dared to drown.
Each shard he shaped, a fragment of his all,
each stroke, a plea to hold what slips adown.

But flesh is weak where will alone persists;
his breath grew shallow, fingers numb and split.
The cave, once still, now thrummed with spectral mists,
as death leaned close to claim the artist’s wit.

“One final touch,” he gasped, her icy palm
now cradling his cheek in cold repose.
“Here, love, we’ll dwell beyond the world’s false calm,
where neither time nor scorn may interpose.”

The mallet fell. The glacier sighed and shifted,
sealing the grotto with a crash like doom.
Two forms entwined where frost and love had drifted—
a man become his masterpiece’s tomb.

Back in the hamlet, rumors rose and fell—
some swore they heard his chisel in the breeze,
or saw her face in winter’s brittle swell,
a fleeting dream that thawed with morning’s ease.

But travelers who brave the northern pass
still speak of shadows dancing, pale and fair,
of laughter ringing deep in glacial glass,
and art that turned exile to lovers’ lair.

Yet none dare touch the cave’s unyielding face,
where beauty sleeps in sorrow’s last cocoon.
For love, they say, carved its own hallowed space,
and there, in ice, two hearts outrace the moon.