The Wanderer’s Lament in Twilight Veil
Where shadows weave their tales of long-dead woe,
A traveler treads with steps both slow and worn,
Through valleys hushed, by time and tempest torn.
His cloak, a shroud of dusk’s repentant gray,
Clings to his form like memories of dismay.
The path he walks, once paved with ardent stone,
Now whispers lies where truth was once enthroned.
A village sleeps, forgotten by the sun,
Its spires like fingers from a grave undone.
No hearths now burn with amber-hued embrace,
No laughter stirs the dust in this dead place.
Yet here, he halts—for in the crumbling air,
A ghostly fragrance lingers, faint and fair:
The scent of roses from a garden lost,
Where love once bloomed, though frost hath borne the cost.
“O hallowed ground,” he murmurs to the breeze,
“Where dwell the phantoms of my heart’s disease,
I seek the truth that fled these withered lanes,
The face that haunts my twilight and my rains.”
The wind replies in syllables of thorn,
A dirge for hopes too tender to be borne.
But still he presses on, through archways lean,
Where ivy chokes the stones with jealous green.
A door, ajar, creaks tales of yesteryear—
A cottage, frail as grief, draws him near.
Within, the dust performs its silent dance,
A waltz of years no soul may now recast.
A portrait fades upon the mildewed wall:
A maiden’s smile, once bright, now spectral-pale.
Her eyes, twin pools where moonlight dared to swim,
Now gaze through him to realms beyond life’s rim.
“Elaine,” he breathes—the name a shattered chord—
“Thy voice once wove the dawn’s first golden word.
Thy hands, now ash, once cradled spring’s delight.
Why dost thou flee me through this endless night?”
The walls exhale a sigh of rust and rue,
As if the past might stir, anew, anew.
But naught replies save echoes of his cry,
Which fade like stars within a scornful sky.
Yet in the square, where market songs once rang,
A figure stands—a crone, her face a pang.
Her cloak, a tapestry of frost and fears,
Her voice, the rasp of autumn’s dying years:
“Fool! Dost thou court the phantoms of thine ache?
No truth resides here save the hearts we break.
The past is but a tomb with seals of fire—
To touch its shroud is to become its pyre.”
He turns, his soul a tempest clad in flesh,
“Speak not of tombs when I seek truths afresh!
If thou dost know her fate, unveil the veil—
Or let the silence crown thy tongue’s betrayal.”
The crone’s laugh cracks the stillness like a blade,
“Thy Elaine rests where all bright things are laid.
She waits beyond the veil no tear may part—
Not in this world, but in thy breaking heart.”
A raven croaks from yonder splintered yew,
Its cry a dirge the traveler already knew.
He stumbles to the churchyard’s sunken keep,
Where willows weep for those forbidden sleep.
A stone, half-sunk in earth’s remorseful breast,
Bears letters Time hath blurred but not repressed:
“Here lies Elaine, whose laughter knew the morn,
Now bound to dusk, from mortal sorrows torn.”
The earth beneath him shudders, soft and deep,
As roots of ancient oaks begin to weep.
He claws the soil, his nails with grime engraved,
To find the truth his soul hath vainly craved.
But lo!—beneath the loam, no corpse doth lie,
No bone, no relic ‘neath the judging sky.
A casket yawns, its velvet void as doom,
Holding but one pale rose, still wrapped in gloom.
He lifts the bloom, its petals cold as scorn,
And in its heart, a thorn—both curse and mourn.
“So this,” he gasps, “is all that fate allows?
A flower’s ghost to crown my withered vows?”
The rose dissolves to ash within his hand,
A fleeting kiss from some unseen command.
The village fades, a dream within a sigh,
As dawn’s first blade now scars the eastern sky.
Alone, he stands where home and heart once twined,
His truth unmasked—a void no mind may bind.
The road ahead, a serpent forged of years,
Coils ‘round his soul, its fangs distilled from tears.
He turns to shadows, where the lost abide,
And lets the twilight claim him—grave and bride.
For truths, he learned, are but the scars we bear,
And love, the ghost that drowns in its own snare.
