The Mariner’s Lament in the Garden of Shadows
A mariner adrift in night, condemned to endless deep,
Beheld a phantom shore arise from mists that coiled like snakes,
And heard the whispers of the wind intone his soul’s dire aches.
“O cursed tide, O starless void,” he cried to skies above,
“Where leads this voyage without end, this labyrinth of love?”
No answer came but murmurs low, the sea’s unfeeling hymn,
As timbers groaned and rigging sighed, the deck beneath him slim.Yet lo! A glimmer pierced the gloom—a lantern’s fragile blaze—
That beckoned him to shores unknown through labyrinthine haze.
He steered his bark, a ghostly craft, to where the shallows gleam,
And stumbled forth on trembling legs, as one who walks in dream.
There sprawled a garden, veiled in time, where roses dared not bloom,
But clung to life with thorns of ice, exhaling sweet perfume.
The air was thick with memories, half-rotted and half-born,
And every step awoke a sigh from soil forlorn and worn.”Who treads this sacred, blighted ground?” a voice like twilight spake,
A figure robed in tattered grey, whose visage seemed to ache.
Her eyes were pools of ancient rain, her hair a silver shroud,
Her hands, like roots, entwined with blooms that trembled, lost, unbowed.
“I am but dust,” the mariner gasped, “a wraith of salt and brine,
Who seeks reprieve from Neptune’s wrath, a respite from the brine.”
She smiled, a crescent moon of woe, and raised her withered palm:
“All who enter here must pay the garden’s whispered psalm.”
Through arbors draped in ivy’s grasp, where shadows drank the light,
They wandered paths of cobbled bone, through petals spun from night.
She spoke of lovers turned to stone, of hearts encased in frost,
Of voyages that led men home to find their worlds were lost.
“Beware the roses,” she intoned, “their nectar masks a lie,
For every sip of solace brewed demands a soul’s reply.
This garden feeds on longing’s tears, on hopes that dare not fade—
Its beauty is a siren’s song, its peace a masquerade.”
Yet drawn by fevered hunger, by the ache within his breast,
The mariner reached forth to pluck a bloom above the rest.
Its petals, black as widow’s lace, unfurled with whispered breath,
And from its heart there dripped a dew that tasted sweet as death.
“Fool!” the guardian mourned, her voice a dirge beneath the boughs,
“Now bound art thou to wander here, as chain to mortal vows.
Thy flesh shall fade, thy bones shall blend with earth’s unending sigh,
And all thy dreams become but dust beneath this soulless sky.”
He laughed, a hollow, rattling sound that shook the ashen air,
“What care I for mortal bonds, for breath, for worldly care?
Let ocean claim the shell I was—here shall I build my tomb,
And let the roses drink their fill of sorrow’s bitter gloom.”
But as he spoke, the garden shifted, vines like serpents twined,
And thorns embraced his ankles fast, with cruelty refined.
The guardian knelt, her tears like pearls, to touch his fevered brow:
“Thy tragedy was writ in stars—I could but warn thee now.”
Day bled to night, and night to dawn, yet time held neither sway
Nor mercy in that blighted realm where sunlight dared not play.
The mariner, once broad of chest, now dwindled, gaunt and pale,
His voice a rasp of splintered reeds, his skin like weathered sail.
The garden’s poison, slow and sweet, devoured all he’d been—
Each memory, each whispered hope, each trace of mortal sin.
At last he sank, a broken mast, beside a stagnant pool,
And watched his face, now hollowed, melt to shadows dark and cruel.
“O guardian,” he breathed, his words a mist upon the breeze,
“What purpose serves this cursed plot? What end to agonies?”
She cradled him as mothers do a child claimed by the frost:
“The garden is a mirror, love, for hearts that tempest-tossed
Seek refuge from the storms without, yet find within these walls
A tempest of the spirit, where the lonely soul enthralls
Itself to echoes of the past, to dreams that rot and weep—
Here, all who flee the sea’s embrace find tides no lessens deep.”
His final breath, a sigh of rue, escaped his lips like smoke,
And where he lay, a rose sprang forth, its stem a twisted oak.
Its petals bore the hue of veins, its scent a cloying musk,
And in its heart, a single drop of blood turned slowly dusk.
The guardian stood, her vigil kept, her tears the garden’s rain,
And whispered to the gathering dark, “Another soul’s vain pain
Has fed the soil, has fed the thorns, has fed the endless night—
Yet still they come, the wounded ones, to trade their wounds for blight.”
Far off, the sea, indifferent, roared beneath the moon’s cold gaze,
While in the garden, shadows danced their slow, unending maze.
And sailors lost to fate’s cruel whim still heed the lantern’s call,
To trade their mortal agony for thorns that bind them all.
Thus spins the wheel of sorrow’s trade, where hope and doom entwine—
The mariner’s lament lives on, in petals steeped in brine.
