The Sundial’s Lament

He comes as shadows lengthen into ghosts,
The Old One, leaning on his cane of yew,
His eyes two pools where moonlight drowned its grief.
The path, a serpent coiled in jasmine musk,
Unfurls beneath his tread—each cracking flagstone
A ledger of the days he came to count
The syllables of absence, slow and sure.

Here stands the sundial, charred by noon’s neglect,
Its gnomon pointing nowhere but the past.
He traces numerals etched by a dead hand,
Whispers the name that lichens dare not cloak—
*Evelyn*—a sigh the willows catch and keep,
While somewhere, past the wall where nightshade chokes,
A blackbird sings the anthem of the lost.

She comes as twilight kneels to kiss the earth,
A shape of mist where lilacs dare to bloom,
Her gown the gray of unremembered dawns.
No mortal step disturbs the sleeping gravel,
No pulse but his own thunder fills the air
As recognition’s blade slips through his ribs—
Her face, unchanged by decades’ hungry march,
The very eyes that once outshone the spheres,
Now twin abysses where his soul hangs taut.

“You linger,” says the specter, voice a chime
Of frost on glass, “where living men withdraw.
What debt unpaid still chains you to this grove?”
He falters, clutches at the sundial’s rim—
Cold bronze bites flesh, but deeper wounds prevail.
“The debt,” he croaks, “of words I left unsaid,
When summer claimed you for its jealous bed.”

A wind awakes, all ash and wilted scent,
Stirring her form to ripples on a lake.
“Words are the currency of those who breathe,”
She mourns. “I trade in echoes now, old friend.
You built me shrines in every bud that falls,
Yet never learned to read the soil’s reply—
Love buried root-deep strangles what it feeds.”

Beneath the oak that knew their first embrace
(Now gnarled as Time’s own fist), she floats, a wisp
Of memory made substance. He dares approach,
His hand outstretched—a leaf through smoke it passes.
“How many springs have I kept vigil here,”
He rasps, “while you, a portrait framed in air,
Grew fainter with each year’s uncaring tread?”

“You错把执念当祭品，” her whisper stings,
“My essence lingered not for your remorse,
But as the thorn remains when blooms are shed—
A testament to wounds that shaped the stem.
Go, mortal, wrest your heart from ivy’s clutch,
Before the garden claims what I’ve reclaimed.”

But oh, the cruel alchemy of hope—
He bars her path, though substance fails his grasp,
And pleads with all the passion time could not erase:
“If ghosts can walk where living hearts despair,
Then let me follow past the veil you wear!
What law divides your breath from mine tonight?
I’ll burn these hedges, shatter every urn,
Till Death Himself concedes you were unjustly torn!”

Her laughter now, a knell of shattered crystal:
“You raze the garden, still the sundial stands.
You cannot duel with shadows, foolish heart—
My death was never yours to circumvent.
That golden dusk when fever closed my throat,
You sought to bargain with indifferent stars,
While I, unshriven, drank oblivion’s draft…
We are the tale that every rosebud knows—
First blush, then blight, then thorns for all who linger.”

Dew becomes tears on statues long disowned,
The marble Muse’s cheeks now slick with grief.
He sinks before her, crumbling like the path,
Each crease in his face a valley carved by rivers
That never reached the sea. “Then grant me this—
One leaf from when we loved, one seed to keep,
That I might plant it where your memory sleeps.”

She fades, yet in her wake, a single petal
Descends—crimson as the day she fell ill.
He clasps it to his breast, a second heartbeat,
Then gasps: the fragile flesh between his fingers
Crumbles to dust that scatters on the stones.
Above, the stars align their cold verdict—
Orion draws his sword, the Plough tilts south,
And midnight’s ivy crawls to cloak the dial.

Dawn finds him frozen at the garden’s heart,
A sculpture knelt where no prayer holds dominion,
His cane embraced by upstart aconite.
The caretaker, come to trim rebellious boughs,
Marks how the sundial’s shadow splits his throat—
A perfect line dividing then from now.
They’ll say he died of winters overcounted,
Never noting how the roses, overnight,
Had all turned white, their centers stained rust-red,
Nor how the blackbird ceased its nightly dirge
To croon a lullaby in some lost tongue.

The gate swings shut. Somewhere, a clockwork moon
Winds down its gears. Where lovers’ whispers roost,
A single truth takes root in poisoned soil:
The garden grows most vibrant when it feeds
On hearts that loved too late, too deep, too long—
Its beauty but the gloss on death’s patient grin.
And all that remains is the sundial’s scarred face,
Its numerals weeping verdigris like tears,
Spelling the hour no soul escapes unscathed:
*Too late. Too late. Always and ever… too late.*