The Starveling’s Last Litany

Three hundred dawns had bled their gold since first
He came to court the murmuring abyss,
His parchment made of gullwings long dispersed,
His ink distilled from midnight’s bitter kiss.
The island wore him as a leprous crown –
Thin fingers tracing verses in the frost
That bloomed ephemeral on the chapel’s gown
Where shattered saints watched time’s currency lost.

“O transient orb,” he cried to western stars,
“Who etch your requiems on tidal skin,
Lend me the cadence of your dying czars
To hymn what ebbs ere sorrow may begin!”
But constellations in their icy vault
Preserved their silence like a snapped violin’s throat,
While through his ribs, the sirenwind assault
Unstrung the lyre of his mortal note.

Until one eve when autumn’s pyre smoldered
Low in the west like hope’s expiring wick,
A light descended—not of heaven’s order—
A silver maiden formed from starry syntax.
Her gown was woven of the Milky Way’s loom,
Her eyes twin novae in a face moon-pale,
And in her wake trailed jasmine-scented gloom
That made the very rocks grow spectral frail.

“Child of the hourglass,” her voice arose
Like glaciers calving dirges in the north,
“Thy tears have rusted Chronos’ brazen rose
And drawn me earthward from my firelit berth.
What bargain wouldst thou strike with fleeting Time?
Immortal verse? A name etched in the sky?
Or but to pause this unrelenting rhyme
That grinds thy youth to dust ere I pass by?”

The poet knelt, his breath a shattered glass
Strewn silver ‘cross her cosmic hem’s demesne.
“Not fame,” he whispered, “nor death’s frozen pass
Do I entreat, O luminous terrene.
But stay one night—one mortal night—and sit
Where mortal shadows dare to touch thy grace.
Let dawn find me annealed by thy converse lit,
Then take what’s left of this time-eaten face.”

The star-maid’s laughter shook the Pleiades’ throne
As comets winced in their diamond trajectories.
“Thy price exceeds Troy’s ashes, little one—
To chain a star breeds cataclysmic ecstasies.
Yet…” Here she paused, her radiance grown diffuse
Like candleflame reflected in black pearls,
“Three hours I’ll grant. Choose well how they’re used
Ere cosmic wine sours in celestial whirls.”

Thus began their waltz ‘twixt mortal and meteor,
He matching her footfalls on the foam’s lace,
She learning how salt tastes in tears that fleer
At beauty found too late to embrace.
They spoke of twilight’s melancholy blushes,
Of nebulae where dead dreams incubate,
Of how the sea remembers lovers’ crushes
In coral threnodies that suffocate.

When Vega’s harpstrings thrummed the midnight toll,
Her luminescence dimmed to human glow.
“Thy time runs swift, dear ephemeral soul—
Make thy demand ere tidal forces grow.”
The poet gazed where dawn’s first blade now hovered
Above the horizon’s unstitched seam.
“One kiss,” he breathed, “though it rend and uncover
All I am. Let dissolution be my theme.”

Pity then cracked that star’s immortal mask—
A fracture through which all her ancient pain
Cascaded forth in supernovic gasps
That made the cliffs resound with Time’s migraine.
Her lips met his—a comet’s caustic blessing—
And in that touch, the island ceased its turning.
The sea inhaled. The sky shed its dressing
Of stars like petals from a rose unburning.

When light returned, the cliffs stood bare and altered,
Their striations telling tales of aeons passed.
No poet’s form in seaweed robes lay faltered
Where now the tide wept seashells made of glass.
But high above, where mortal eyes see nothing,
A new star trembles—azure tinged with rue—
Its pulse in time with waves’ eternal touching
That shore which binds all lovers’ last adieu.

And sometimes when the moon is but a shard
Cutting through clouds like some celestial hearse,
You’ll hear their dialogue—the broken bard
And his starlit bride—in the ocean’s reverse:
“How sweet the poison of brief paradise!”
“How cruel the mercy that makes gods of dust!”
Their voices twined in endless sacrifice
To love that dies because it ever must.