The Wandering Shade and the Sea’s Deceit
A spectral voyager treads the waves, a soul condemned to roam,
No vessel bears its sorrow, nor compass guides its flight,
But shadows knit from memories of love extinguished light.
The ocean, raven-maned and wild, with throats of thunder cries,
Its frothing jaws devour stars that dare to meet its eyes,
Yet still the shade advances, though tides like daggers rise,
To seek the phantom whispers beyond the veiled disguise.
“O churning vastness, cruel and cold,” it calls to winds unseen,
“Where lies the shore of solace, the isle where truths convene?
I’ve traced the scars of centuries, yet find no reprieve,
For every crest that beckons me but lures my heart to grieve.”
The gale, a bard of bitterness, intones its grim reply:
“What fool would chase the echo where all but ghosts reside?
Thy quest is but a tempest’s dream, a riddle without breath—
The shore thou seek’st is ash and mist, its sovereign’s name is Death.”
Unyielding, though the heavens rend and lightning brands the air,
The wanderer cleaves onward through despair’s algid lair,
Its essence, once aflame with vows no mortal tongue could tell,
Now frays like thread unspooling where the void’s black currents swell.
Three times the moon did wither, three times the sun bled pale,
Three times the cliffs of anguish hurled back its broken wail,
Till lo! A glint of silver pierced the gloom’s embrace—
A spire of long-lost splendor crowned with time-forgotten grace.
“At last!” the phantom shuddered, “Here ends my ceaseless toll,
The fabled keep of memories, the lighthouse of the soul!”
With limbs of fading vigor, it scaled the waves’ cruel spite,
To clasp the tower’s radiance—yet found its heart ignite
Not with the fire of triumph, but dread’s unending chill,
For stone dissolved to seafoam beneath the window sill,
And in the lantern’s hollow, where no flame dared reside,
There grinned the sea’s own visage, mirrored in endless tide.
“Thou pilgrim of the perish’d,” the deep’s dark voice resounds,
“Thy cherished haven perishes where my dominion drowns.
Thou sought the light of substance, yet clung to vapor’s glow—
Behold thy life’s summation: a wake of phantom snow.”
No more the shade protests, for truth’s sharp blade hath cleft
The final veil of longing that in its breast was left.
Its form, a wisp of starlight, succumbs to sorrow’s sweep,
And merges with the fathoms where shattered angels sleep.
The dawn, a timid mourner, now paints the eastern skies,
But naught remains to witness save waves with hollow eyes.
Thus ends the weary odyssey, where hope and sea conspire
To rend the seeking spirit on illusion’s pyre.
The mariners who later haunt this grave of futile quests
Shall hear in every breaker how yearning’s heart protests,
And know the ocean’s ballad, both dirge and siren’s hymn,
Is woven from the ashes of those who chase a whim.
Yet still, in midnight’s silence, when reason’s chains unbind,
Some dreamer, pale and trembling, will peer into the wind,
And spy a flicker distant—a beacon’s fleeting trace—
And stride into the tempest, soul bare, to meet its grace…
