The Luminous Abyss
Where shadows dance with echoes, faint and pale,
There lies a vault, a Grotte mysterieuse,
Bathed in the glow of faint and trembling hues;
A cavern sprung from earth’s reluctant womb,
Enkindled softly by a ghostly plume.
Within this hollowed breast, the air is thick
With secrets old as time’s unyielding tick,
And walls that hum with whispers never voiced,
Of souls long lost, of paths once left unchoiced.
Here wanders one—a traveller of the mind,
An Explorateur des profondeurs to find
Not jewels cast by man’s avarice or lust,
But truths submerged beneath the self’s deep crust.
The air is studded with phosphorescent beads,
Like fireflies caught in crystal’s fragile reeds,
Their glimmer wan, a subtle, trembling guide
Through winding corridors where shadows bide.
Our voyager, whose heart is cloaked in thought,
Unfurls his quest where light and dark are caught,
Seeking the self in labyrinthine streams,
Where waking dawn dissolves in fragile dreams.
O silence! Hush that serves as sounding board
To echoes of the soul’s uncharted chord,
Where questions drape like ivy, cold and dense,
On pillars of a contemplative sense.
“What am I?” breathes the cavern’s hollow voice—
A riddle writ from earth that bids rejoice
Or tremble: for to seek the self is pain,
A pilgrimage through loss, through hope, through strain.
He treads past pools where silver secrets swim,
Each ripple gleams like memory’s fleeting hymn;
Reflected deep, his visage splintered, torn—
A mosaic born from fragments worn and worn.
What shapes the man but shards of past and choice?
Is he the sum, or silent shadow’s voice?
His fingers brush the aqueous glassy pane,
Yearning to seize the echoes in the rain.
A sudden stir—a flutter faint and bright—
A flicker kindled by some arcane light;
It shimmers like a moth whose wings unfold,
Soft as the twilight’s breath and dipped in gold.
“Come forth,” it seems to beckon with a gleam,
“Unmask thyself, no longer chase the dream.”
Yet with each step the darkness folds anew,
The path dissolves in depths both false and true.
He halts beside a throne of jagged stone,
Carved long ago by hands now turned to bone;
Inscribed with runes that speak of ancient strife,
Of mortal longing, and the thread of life.
Here in this sanctum of the earth’s embrace,
He questions not his form, but time and space—
Is man a wanderer of endless night,
Or bearer of an ever-flick’ring light?
A voice—a murmur of the cavern’s breath—
Whispers in tones that weave through life and death:
“Identity is not a stolen crown,
Nor fortress built to hold the soul’s renown;
It is a river ceaseless in its flow,
A dance of tides that none may truly know;
A weaving of the self and shadow’s face,
A ceaseless, aching, tender, vast embrace.”
He sinks upon a bed of ancient stone,
His pulse attuned to rhythms not his own;
The grotto hums, alive with whispered tales,
Of countless seekers lost in twilight dales.
Within his mind, a mirror cracks and gleams,
Fragile reflections of forgotten dreams;
Yet through the fissures, mysteries ignite,
A spark transformed from trembling furling light.
He speaks aloud, his words both fierce and grave:
“Am I the master of the path I brave?
Or merely breath adrift on destiny’s shore,
A palimpsest of selves that came before?”
The cavern listens, echoes softly stale,
Neither confirming truth nor casting veil.
The walls breathe deep, their pulse a ceaseless rhyme,
A cadence older than the sweep of time,
They sing of hours bound in mortal plight,
Of souls that yearn for constellations bright;
Yet bound to earth, where darkness softly weaves
The twin of light, a tapestry that grieves.
As dawn’s first fingers pry the cavern’s mouth,
A trembling figure stirs from shadow’s south,
Eyes wide with visions caught between the gleam
Of fading dark and waking morning’s dream.
The explorer, now worn yet undismayed,
Stands poised where night and day converse, arrayed
In quiet awe before the realm within,
Where journeys start anew, and none can win—
Or lose—the self, the riddle, or the quest,
For in the searching lies the soul’s bequest.
And though the grotto’s mystery still holds,
Its silence rich with untold tales and folds,
The path ahead is veiled in mist and dew,
An open door to evermore, and you—
Who dares to seek the depths where shadows blend,
To know the self that has no simple end;
The quest eternal, fluid as the sea—
The radiant dark, identity’s decree.
