The Wanderer’s Last Epistle
Beneath the ashen vault where time’s chill breath
Has gnawed the marble bones of gods long fled,
A lone wayfarer treads with steps that strain
Through ivy’s serpent grasp and rot’s embrace.
His shadow, gaunt as twilight’s dwindling wick,
Falls frail upon the temple’s splintered gate—
A maw of fractured stone, its hymns now hushed,
Where echoes of lost prayers like phantoms weep.
No pilgrim’s zeal now lights his sunken eye,
No fervor threads the tremor in his palm;
Yet drawn by whispers of some nameless ache,
He parts the dust-curtains of centuries.
Through archways stooped as mourners o’er a grave,
He moves where frescoes flake to spectral shades,
Their gold-leaf saints now lepers of the air,
Their azure skies reduced to mold’s gray script.
Here in the nave where silence stands enshrined,
A slant of pallid light, a thief, intrudes—
Illumes an altar where no wine was spilled,
No bread of solace broke, for ten thousand days.
Upon its slab, a casket wrought of yew
Gapes wide, its velvet withered to a shroud,
And in its breast, a parchment folded small,
A crisped chrysalis waiting for the flame.
The traveler’s hand, though doubt’s cold fingers clutch,
Unfurls the page where time’s own spit has blurred
Ink’s ardent trails—now veins of rusted brown—
Yet words persist like scars on fortune’s cheek:
*”To you who tread where I have poured my soul—
Though centuries may stretch their hungry jaws
‘Twixt your gaze and this script—I charge thee, pause.
Hear how hope’s nectar turned to vinegar
Within the chalice of a mortal breast;
How once this shrine was vowed to quench the thirst
Of those who bore life’s lash yet dared to sing.
They named me guardian of the flame renewed,
The undying spark struck from despair’s own flint.
For thirty winters, by these altar stairs,
I kept vigil with patience as my staff—
Each dawn, a scroll of vows from strangers borne
By hands that shook with dreams’ ephemeral weight;
Each dusk, the ashes of their pleas dispersed
To ride the winds and seed some distant dawn.
Till came a morn when no foot crossed the sill,
No breath disturbed the cobwebs on the font.
The world, it seemed, had cured itself of hope,
Had swallowed stones to ballast heavy hearts.
Still, through the seasons’ taunt and famine’s leer,
I trimmed the wick no hands but mine would see,
Transcribed the prayers no lips but ghosts would speak,
And fed the flame with memory’s phantom logs.
The twentieth year: my eyes grew dim as moths
That dance with shadows where no candle lives.
The twenty-fifth: my quill began to scrawl
In tongues unknown even to godless scribes.
Then on the eve when winter’s teeth sank deep,
I saw the truth uncoil its serpent form—
Not one soul lingered in hope’s vestibule;
The age of yearning perished with my breath.
This temple, built to house eternity’s bloom,
Now cradles but the corpse of my delusion.
I seal this dirge where no earth-mother’s ear
Shall catch its murmur ‘neath the roots of oaks.
Let future’s archaeologist of grief
Decipher how a mortal heart, once vast
As summer’s sky, contracts to this clenched fist—
A stone that sinks through time’s indifferent sea.”*
The traveler’s breath hangs frost within the vault.
Through cracks where moonlight bleeds like liquid lead,
He scans the altar where no flame has leapt
Since this dead chronicler laid down his pen.
A hollow where the casket kissed the wood
Retains the impress of love’s mummied ghost,
And there—O subtle knife of destiny—
A second script, in dust’s pale cipher drawn:
*”Addendum to my testament of air—
Three days have passed since sealing my farewell.
A miracle: footfalls in the withered grove!
A youth, mud-caked and quivering with dawn,
Has come to beg the flame’s transcendent spark.
‘The war,’ he gasped, ‘has rendered all fields stone;
Yet in my breast, a stubborn ember glows.’
I gave him sanctuary, ink, and wax.
But as he bent to inscribe ardent vows,
A cough wracked ribs where plague had etched its runes.
He fell as autumn’s final leaf descends,
His scroll still virgin of petition’s stain.
I bear him now to where the crypts consume
All aspirations in their marble womb.
This temple’s final pilgrim rests below—
His hope, my hope, interred as one cold seed.
Let no man say the universe conspires;
It merely yawns and turns its cyclops eye.
Farewell, unquiet shades of what might be—
I join the choir that sings no requiem.”*
Now falls a stillness not of earth nor air,
But born where all abandoned prayers congeal.
The traveler kneels, his palm pressed to the stone
That drinks the fever from his mortal flesh.
What madness led him here, to clasp the void,
To seek in ruins what the living world
Had scorched from him in childhood’s brutal forge—
That frail, despised, yet tenacious weed, hope?
He rises, clutching to his breast the page
As monks clutch relics of some sainted crumb.
Through labyrinthine dark he gropes, retraces
Steps that now falter with prophetic weight.
The gate’s arch looms—a ribcage stripped of heart—
Beyond, the moors stretch infinite and wan,
A scroll erased by time’s meticulous hand,
Awaiting scripts no pilgrim will inscribe.
And here, where path and wasteland merge as one,
He halts. The letter fragments in his grip—
A storm of ash, a blizzard of defeat—
Is scattered to the sirocco’s disdain.
Thus lightens of its burden the abyss;
Thus ends the tale no chronicle will mourn.
The temple, watching through its cataract
Of vines, exhales a requiem of dust.
Far off, a lark’s note pierces leaden clouds—
Too brief, too late. The traveler turns his face
To where the horizon grinds its molars slow,
And takes the first step into oblivion’s maw.
No epitaph, save wind’s unceasing moan;
No moral, save this truth all flesh must learn:
The well of hope, though deep, contains no drop
That can outlast the thirst of endless years.
Has gnawed the marble bones of gods long fled,
A lone wayfarer treads with steps that strain
Through ivy’s serpent grasp and rot’s embrace.
His shadow, gaunt as twilight’s dwindling wick,
Falls frail upon the temple’s splintered gate—
A maw of fractured stone, its hymns now hushed,
Where echoes of lost prayers like phantoms weep.
No pilgrim’s zeal now lights his sunken eye,
No fervor threads the tremor in his palm;
Yet drawn by whispers of some nameless ache,
He parts the dust-curtains of centuries.
Through archways stooped as mourners o’er a grave,
He moves where frescoes flake to spectral shades,
Their gold-leaf saints now lepers of the air,
Their azure skies reduced to mold’s gray script.
Here in the nave where silence stands enshrined,
A slant of pallid light, a thief, intrudes—
Illumes an altar where no wine was spilled,
No bread of solace broke, for ten thousand days.
Upon its slab, a casket wrought of yew
Gapes wide, its velvet withered to a shroud,
And in its breast, a parchment folded small,
A crisped chrysalis waiting for the flame.
The traveler’s hand, though doubt’s cold fingers clutch,
Unfurls the page where time’s own spit has blurred
Ink’s ardent trails—now veins of rusted brown—
Yet words persist like scars on fortune’s cheek:
*”To you who tread where I have poured my soul—
Though centuries may stretch their hungry jaws
‘Twixt your gaze and this script—I charge thee, pause.
Hear how hope’s nectar turned to vinegar
Within the chalice of a mortal breast;
How once this shrine was vowed to quench the thirst
Of those who bore life’s lash yet dared to sing.
They named me guardian of the flame renewed,
The undying spark struck from despair’s own flint.
For thirty winters, by these altar stairs,
I kept vigil with patience as my staff—
Each dawn, a scroll of vows from strangers borne
By hands that shook with dreams’ ephemeral weight;
Each dusk, the ashes of their pleas dispersed
To ride the winds and seed some distant dawn.
Till came a morn when no foot crossed the sill,
No breath disturbed the cobwebs on the font.
The world, it seemed, had cured itself of hope,
Had swallowed stones to ballast heavy hearts.
Still, through the seasons’ taunt and famine’s leer,
I trimmed the wick no hands but mine would see,
Transcribed the prayers no lips but ghosts would speak,
And fed the flame with memory’s phantom logs.
The twentieth year: my eyes grew dim as moths
That dance with shadows where no candle lives.
The twenty-fifth: my quill began to scrawl
In tongues unknown even to godless scribes.
Then on the eve when winter’s teeth sank deep,
I saw the truth uncoil its serpent form—
Not one soul lingered in hope’s vestibule;
The age of yearning perished with my breath.
This temple, built to house eternity’s bloom,
Now cradles but the corpse of my delusion.
I seal this dirge where no earth-mother’s ear
Shall catch its murmur ‘neath the roots of oaks.
Let future’s archaeologist of grief
Decipher how a mortal heart, once vast
As summer’s sky, contracts to this clenched fist—
A stone that sinks through time’s indifferent sea.”*
The traveler’s breath hangs frost within the vault.
Through cracks where moonlight bleeds like liquid lead,
He scans the altar where no flame has leapt
Since this dead chronicler laid down his pen.
A hollow where the casket kissed the wood
Retains the impress of love’s mummied ghost,
And there—O subtle knife of destiny—
A second script, in dust’s pale cipher drawn:
*”Addendum to my testament of air—
Three days have passed since sealing my farewell.
A miracle: footfalls in the withered grove!
A youth, mud-caked and quivering with dawn,
Has come to beg the flame’s transcendent spark.
‘The war,’ he gasped, ‘has rendered all fields stone;
Yet in my breast, a stubborn ember glows.’
I gave him sanctuary, ink, and wax.
But as he bent to inscribe ardent vows,
A cough wracked ribs where plague had etched its runes.
He fell as autumn’s final leaf descends,
His scroll still virgin of petition’s stain.
I bear him now to where the crypts consume
All aspirations in their marble womb.
This temple’s final pilgrim rests below—
His hope, my hope, interred as one cold seed.
Let no man say the universe conspires;
It merely yawns and turns its cyclops eye.
Farewell, unquiet shades of what might be—
I join the choir that sings no requiem.”*
Now falls a stillness not of earth nor air,
But born where all abandoned prayers congeal.
The traveler kneels, his palm pressed to the stone
That drinks the fever from his mortal flesh.
What madness led him here, to clasp the void,
To seek in ruins what the living world
Had scorched from him in childhood’s brutal forge—
That frail, despised, yet tenacious weed, hope?
He rises, clutching to his breast the page
As monks clutch relics of some sainted crumb.
Through labyrinthine dark he gropes, retraces
Steps that now falter with prophetic weight.
The gate’s arch looms—a ribcage stripped of heart—
Beyond, the moors stretch infinite and wan,
A scroll erased by time’s meticulous hand,
Awaiting scripts no pilgrim will inscribe.
And here, where path and wasteland merge as one,
He halts. The letter fragments in his grip—
A storm of ash, a blizzard of defeat—
Is scattered to the sirocco’s disdain.
Thus lightens of its burden the abyss;
Thus ends the tale no chronicle will mourn.
The temple, watching through its cataract
Of vines, exhales a requiem of dust.
Far off, a lark’s note pierces leaden clouds—
Too brief, too late. The traveler turns his face
To where the horizon grinds its molars slow,
And takes the first step into oblivion’s maw.
No epitaph, save wind’s unceasing moan;
No moral, save this truth all flesh must learn:
The well of hope, though deep, contains no drop
That can outlast the thirst of endless years.
