The Lament of the Distant Shore

The sea, his confidante, in whispered cries,
Unfurled her tales in mist and salt and foam,
Beneath the grey and ever-weeping skies,
He found no comfort, save the vast, wild loam.

His gaze was fixed beyond the watery bed,
Where horizon’s edge did kiss the waning light,
A liminal place between the living and dead,
Where day dissolves to melancholic night.

The sand beneath bore footprints lone and deep,
Etchings of fleeting passions, lost and vain,
Each step a testament to souls that weep,
Etched by the hands of Fate’s unyielding chain.

“Ah, Fatality!” he mused in somber tone,
“Thou art the sculptor of our fragile clay,
A shadow cast where light is overthrown,
And time, the thief, doth steal our breath away.”

His voice, a mournful echo ‘gainst the gale,
Was swallowed by the rolling, endless tide,
For man, though mighty seeks to prevail,
Yet finds his hopes in waters dark and wide.

He paced the strand with cautious, measured pace,
Each step a chapter in a woeful tome,
His mind a maze, a labyrinthine space,
Where every hope met Fate’s unyielding dome.

“Why must the waves repeat their ceaseless fall?
Why must the stars their distant vigils keep?
Are we not more than shadows on the wall,
Mere phantoms dreaming in a transient sleep?”

His hands he raised as though to seize the air,
To grasp the dreams that mocked his mortal bind,
Yet all was naught but mist and empty care,
A fleeting breath that Fate alone designed.

The ocean’s arms were wide, inviting, vast,
To cradle all his sorrows in her breast,
Yet Marin lingered, tethered to the past,
A ship unwilling to her final rest.

Beside the waves, a weathered driftwood stood,
A monument to years which time forgot,
Its gnarled frame, like Marin’s brooding mood,
Bent by storms that ceaselessly besot.

“O ceaseless tide,” he sighed, “what mournful song
Do you repeat through ages overworn?
Do you not tire of pulling us along,
To shores where hope is shattered and forlorn?”

The wind replied with whispers sharp and cold,
“You grasp at meaning locked beyond your reach,
In cycles ancient, endlessly retold,
Yet no mortal heart can this truth impeach.”

Marin’s eyes, once bright, now mirrors of woe,
Reflected back the sky’s oppressive grey,
Within his breast, two shadows held their row,
Despair and yearning battled for their sway.

A lone gull cried, a sharpened blade of sound,
Piercing the veil of his despondent mind,
Its flight a metaphor profound, unbound—
A freedom he could neither seek nor find.

“Tell me, O sea, what destiny awaits
A man who walks alone ’twixt dusk and dawn?
Whose life is overwhelmed by heavy weights,
Whose deeds and dreams lie shattered and withdrawn?”

A silence answered—deep, profound, austere—
The vast abyss from which all things emerge,
No whisper came beyond the crashing near,
No solace found within that mournful surge.

The sun, now slowly sinking towards the west,
Cast crimson hues upon the shivering brine,
And in that gilded dusk, his heart confessed
A truth more bitter than the salt and brine.

That fate’s vast ocean knows no reverie,
Nor grants reprieve to seeking souls forlorn,
But holds them fast in mournful treachery,
Ere born anew to face another morn.

Yet Marin’s will, though battered and constrained,
Had braved the jagged shores of thought and time,
Though flecked with tears and wearied, unchained,
Still yearned to scale Life’s steep, relentless climb.

But even as the twilight turned to night,
And stars retreated into veiled retreat,
His spirit faltered ’gainst the fading light,
Defeated by the endless, cruel repeat.

Upon that plage balayée par la mer,
Where waves did carve their stories in the sand,
He knelt, surrendered to the somber air,
A fallen knight bereft of guiding hand.

“Not all must triumph, nor the strong endure,”
He whispered low beneath the moon’s pale glance,
“For some are caught within the vast obscure,
Lost echoes in Life’s mournful, endless dance.”

Then, sinking deep into the sable shore,
He stretched his hands to clasp the watery shroud,
No fight remained to summon up once more,
Only the silence of the mourning cloud.

The tide embraced him with a cold caress,
A final rest within her boundless keep,
His thoughts dissolved in ocean’s vastness—
A soul at last at peace, though drowned in deep.

So ends the tale on that desolate strand,
Of Marin, lost amidst the fatal sea,
Whose dreams were born to fall like fragile sand,
Bound ever tight to bleak mortality.

And though his story fades into the gloom,
His whispered plight endures in every wave,
An echo haunting every salt-sea tomb,
A testament to fate none can evade.