The Cathedral’s Sigh: A Ballad of Ink and Shadows
Beneath the vaulted ribs of stone, where silence pooled like lead,
A figure knelt—a youth too pale, with whispers in his tread.
His fingers traced the frigid tiles, each crack a scripture’s scar,
While moonbeams, fractured saints of light, through stained glass wept their star.
The air hung thick with incense ghosts, half-mourned, half-clad in time,
And shadows coiled like serpents old, their tongues versed in the sublime.
He bore no name but “Poet,” crowned in thorns of unspun verse,
His lips a seam of sealed lament, his curse the universe.
For once, when dawn was yet a blush, he’d sworn a fatal oath:
To shear his tongue of metaphor, let ballads strangle growth.
No sonnet’s breath would part his lips, no dirge his quill command—
Yet here, where echoes nursed their wounds, he cupped a trembling hand.
A parchment, sallow as his soul, unfurled its withered plea,
While memory, that fickle muse, gnawed chains he’d deemed debris.
“Oblivion,” he’d vowed, “be mine, ere art’s sweet venom spread,”
But ah—the heart, that renegade, still hammered verses unsaid.
III
Recall the night his silence broke (the stars leaned close to hear):
A girl, her laughter etched in spring, had vanished like a tear.
Her eyes—two pools where twilight drowned—now haunted every line
He dared not write, yet could not kill, in this cathedral’s shrine.
“Speak,” hissed the shadows, “forge her tale, or let her ghost decay!
Is flesh more frail than ink’s resolve? Shall truth be locked away?”
His quill, a splinter of his spine, convulsed in spectral ache—
One drop, one word, one scarlet sin… the vault began to shake.
IV
He wrote. The walls expelled a moan, as if the stones bore veins,
And every letter seared the air with pyres of long-dead pains.
Her story surged—a feral tide—through arches high and grim:
The locket clasped in icy hands, the kiss meant just for him,
The oath she’d begged him never take, the pact with darker lore
That bound his voice to endless hush… till love pried wide the door.
“You vowed!” the carven angels roared, their marble tears agleam,
“Yet spit your rhymes into the void. Choose: penance or her scream.”
V
The poet wove her epitaph in stanzas sharp as knives,
Each metaphor a wound laid bare, each rhyme her pulse revived.
The cathedral, ravenous and vast, drank echoes of his crime,
As candle-flames recoiled north, reversing hands of time.
Her phantom, spun from adjective and grief’s raw alchemy,
Materialized—a breath, a wisp—then crumbled achingly.
“You broke what never should be forged,” she mourned, her voice a breeze
That frayed the edges of his form, unstitched his arteries.
VI
Dawn’s fingers groped the rose window, too frail to stanch the night,
As syllables, once caged, now swarmed—a locust-cloud of light.
The Poet, crumbling into verse, felt syntax claim his bones,
His final line a bloodied hook, a truth too long postponed.
The parchment sucked his essence dry, then sighed into the air,
While shadows clapped their leathern wings, devouring despair.
And somewhere, in the transept’s gloom, a maiden’s laugh took root—
A sapling sound where silence now stood harvester of brute.
VII
Travelers who tread those nave-stained stones, beware the hush you tread:
The air still tastes of iron ink, of vows gone vertiginous.
Some claim the moon, when fractured right, reveals his pallid face
Pressed to the glass—still writing, writing, into time’s embrace.
No epitaph adorns his stone, just margins left undone,
Where readers, should they dare to pause, might hear two hearts as one—
A poet’s, stopped mid-cadence, and a love’s that beats… elsewhere,
Entombed in silent psalms, in a cathedral’s breathless prayer.
A figure knelt—a youth too pale, with whispers in his tread.
His fingers traced the frigid tiles, each crack a scripture’s scar,
While moonbeams, fractured saints of light, through stained glass wept their star.
The air hung thick with incense ghosts, half-mourned, half-clad in time,
And shadows coiled like serpents old, their tongues versed in the sublime.
He bore no name but “Poet,” crowned in thorns of unspun verse,
His lips a seam of sealed lament, his curse the universe.
For once, when dawn was yet a blush, he’d sworn a fatal oath:
To shear his tongue of metaphor, let ballads strangle growth.
No sonnet’s breath would part his lips, no dirge his quill command—
Yet here, where echoes nursed their wounds, he cupped a trembling hand.
A parchment, sallow as his soul, unfurled its withered plea,
While memory, that fickle muse, gnawed chains he’d deemed debris.
“Oblivion,” he’d vowed, “be mine, ere art’s sweet venom spread,”
But ah—the heart, that renegade, still hammered verses unsaid.
III
Recall the night his silence broke (the stars leaned close to hear):
A girl, her laughter etched in spring, had vanished like a tear.
Her eyes—two pools where twilight drowned—now haunted every line
He dared not write, yet could not kill, in this cathedral’s shrine.
“Speak,” hissed the shadows, “forge her tale, or let her ghost decay!
Is flesh more frail than ink’s resolve? Shall truth be locked away?”
His quill, a splinter of his spine, convulsed in spectral ache—
One drop, one word, one scarlet sin… the vault began to shake.
IV
He wrote. The walls expelled a moan, as if the stones bore veins,
And every letter seared the air with pyres of long-dead pains.
Her story surged—a feral tide—through arches high and grim:
The locket clasped in icy hands, the kiss meant just for him,
The oath she’d begged him never take, the pact with darker lore
That bound his voice to endless hush… till love pried wide the door.
“You vowed!” the carven angels roared, their marble tears agleam,
“Yet spit your rhymes into the void. Choose: penance or her scream.”
V
The poet wove her epitaph in stanzas sharp as knives,
Each metaphor a wound laid bare, each rhyme her pulse revived.
The cathedral, ravenous and vast, drank echoes of his crime,
As candle-flames recoiled north, reversing hands of time.
Her phantom, spun from adjective and grief’s raw alchemy,
Materialized—a breath, a wisp—then crumbled achingly.
“You broke what never should be forged,” she mourned, her voice a breeze
That frayed the edges of his form, unstitched his arteries.
VI
Dawn’s fingers groped the rose window, too frail to stanch the night,
As syllables, once caged, now swarmed—a locust-cloud of light.
The Poet, crumbling into verse, felt syntax claim his bones,
His final line a bloodied hook, a truth too long postponed.
The parchment sucked his essence dry, then sighed into the air,
While shadows clapped their leathern wings, devouring despair.
And somewhere, in the transept’s gloom, a maiden’s laugh took root—
A sapling sound where silence now stood harvester of brute.
VII
Travelers who tread those nave-stained stones, beware the hush you tread:
The air still tastes of iron ink, of vows gone vertiginous.
Some claim the moon, when fractured right, reveals his pallid face
Pressed to the glass—still writing, writing, into time’s embrace.
No epitaph adorns his stone, just margins left undone,
Where readers, should they dare to pause, might hear two hearts as one—
A poet’s, stopped mid-cadence, and a love’s that beats… elsewhere,
Entombed in silent psalms, in a cathedral’s breathless prayer.
“`
