The Knight of Shifting Sands

Three moons have waxed and waned since fate’s sharp knife
Severed his soul from all he called his life.
A vow he swore, when love’s sweet voice grew dim,
To seek her shade, though reason counseled him:
“No mortal treads where Time’s stern rivers flow,
Nor grasps the phantoms that the wastelands show.”

Yet onward pressed he, parched and fever-mad,
Through valleys where the earth wore bones as clad.
The scorpion’s tail, the vulture’s circling spire
Bore witness to his soul’s unquenched fire.
At night, the stars—cold sentinels above—
Whispered in tongues of lost, forbidden love.

One eve, as twilight’s veil, blood-red, unfurled,
A mirage danced—a figure, slight, ethereal,
Her form half-woven from the desert’s breath,
A ghostly twin to life’s encountereth.
Her voice, a chime from some far, frozen sphere,
Pierced through the haze: “Why haunt my realm, seigneur?”

“I seek,” he gasped, “what sands and years have claimed—
A face the void has namelessly enflamed.
Though flesh may fail, though memory’s lamp grows faint,
This heart insists its anguish knows no taint.”
The spectre sighed—a sound like glass on stone—
“What binds thee, fool, to sorrows not thine own?”

“I loved,” he cried, “a soul as bright as dawn,
Whose laughter once the coldest night could thaw.
But shadows crept, as shadows ever do,
And stole the light that falsehood never knew.
One morn, I woke to silence’s cruel decree—
She walked the path where none may company.”

The wraith, at this, grew still as death’s own hand,
Her form now trembling like a windless sand.
“Thy tale,” she breathed, “hath echoes in my dust—
A king’s son once, in chains of gold and trust,
Did pledge his heart to one the fates denied.
He wanders still, though seven centuries died.”

“Art thou that wretch?” the knight, aghast, inquired,
His blade half-drawn (though reason screamed “Retire!”).
“I am,” she wept, “the echo of his pain,
The shadow of the love he could not chain.
Each grain around thee holds a mourner’s tear,
Each breeze the sigh of those who perish here.”

Then rose a storm—not born of wind or rain,
But from the earth’s deep-throated roar of pain.
The dunes convulsed like oceans in their bed,
The sky turned black with memories of the dead.
Through swirling dark, her voice pierced, thin, forlorn:
“Flee, mortal! Flee, ere thou become the mourn—”

Too late. The ground, a serpentine disguise,
Beneath his feet dissolved to spectral skies.
He fell—not down, but through—as hours, days,
Became mere threads in Time’s unraveled maze.
Then light—but not the sun’s—a cold, blue glow,
Revealed a truth no living man should know.

Before him stretched a hall of mirrors vast,
Each pane a life, each life to shadows cast.
In one, he saw himself—a child, barefoot,
Chasing the moon through meadows’ tender soot.
Another showed the kiss that sealed his doom—
Her lips on his, the night she left his room.

But hark! A figure, cloaked in ash and rue,
With eyes that held the void’s unending blue,
Approached—a king’s crown rusted on his brow,
His voice the creak of gates none dare allow:
“Thou’st breached the veil, foolhardy mortal knight,
Now choose—the glass, or face eternal night.”

“The glass?” our knight replied, his courage waning.
“Thy past,” the spectre king proclaimed, his hand
Gesturing to the panes where memories burned.
“Pluck one—but know what’s taken can’t be spurned.
Reclaim a moment, yet the price be this—
Thou’lt dwell forever in that captured abyss.”

The knight, near broken, staggered to the wall.
There hung his life—each joy, each bitter gall.
He reached—then froze. Her face, in crystal clear,
Smiled from a frame. “Beloved, art thou near?”
His fingers brushed the glass—and all dissolved.
The hall, the king, the void, abruptly revolved.

He stood again beneath the desert’s gaze,
But changed—oh, changed!—in uncountable ways.
The sun beat down, yet left his flesh unseared,
The sands still shifted, yet his path appeared
To lead him ever to one cursed site—
A cave where darkness bled into the light.

Within, he found (O cruel, capricious gods!)
A pool that showed what mortal eyes applaud—
His love, alive, in some green, distant land,
Her hand clasped in another’s wedding band.
“Nay!” he howled, “This is some fiendish lie!”
The water hissed: “Truth’s blade lets no man die.”

Then came the voice—the wraith’s—now tinged with woe:
“Thy choice has bound thee to the wastes below.
For though thy heart beats still, it beats alone,
A relic in a realm where time has flown.
The sands shall drink thy tears, the wind thy cries,
Till even ghosts forget thine anguished eyes.”

He turned—beheld her, fading like mist’s breath,
Her form dissolving into desert’s death.
“Stay!” he begged. “What hellish law demands
That I be cursed to tread these blighted sands?”
Her answer, whispered as the sirocco sighed:
“Thou’rt Memory’s prisoner—and Love’s suicide.”

Now legends speak of dunes that shift and groan,
Of armor clanking ‘neath the moon’s cold stone.
Some claim they’ve seen his silhouette at dusk,
A shadow damned to endless, fruitless search.
The stars, they say, in pity sometimes weep
Salt tears that rouse the scorpions from sleep.

But in the cave, the pool still holds its sheen—
A man’s face, gaunt, in waters cold and clean.
His lips move soundless with love’s final oath,
While in the depths, her laughter echoes both
A promise and a curse no art can mend—
The desert’s bride… the knight’s unending end.