The Ascent of Forgotten Shadows
A soldier treads the path where ancient glaciers weep.
His breath, a spectral plume, dissolves in air so thin,
Each step a dirge of ice, a requiem for sin.
The war’s grim specter clings, though leagues behind him lie,
Yet in his shattered soul, the battlefields still cry.
No laurel crowns his brow, no trumpets hail his name—
Only the wind’s lament, a chorus void of fame.
His eyes, once fierce as dawn, now dimmed by sorrow’s veil,
Survey the yawning void where light and darkness fail.
The mountain, gaunt and stark, its summit cloaked in dread,
Invites him to ascend, to join its host of dead.
“What seek you here?” the crags intone with voices old,
“What solace can this waste, this barren freeze, withhold?”
He pauses, grips his cloak—a threadbare shield, outworn—
And feels the tempest’s teeth, its mockery of scorn.
“I seek the final peak,” he murmurs to the night,
“Where memory’s chains may break, and shadows merge with light.”
Through valleys choked with snow, where phantoms of the lost
Drift soundless as the flakes in winter’s fatal frost,
He climbs with trembling limbs, each sinew strained, each joint
A testament to pain, to youth’s extinguished point.
The cliffs, like prison walls, enclose his labored way,
As stars, indifferent, watch his slow, relentless fray.
Three days he scales the heights, three nights he braves the storm,
His hands, raw-blooded, claw through layers yet unformed.
The void, with honeyed lies, bids him to yield, to rest—
“Descend,” it sighs, “and lay your anguish with the blest.”
But still he fights the gale, though reason screams retreat,
For in the abyss above, his shattered hopes entreat.
At last, upon the brink where earth and heaven bleed,
He stumbles, gasps, and falls—a soul in utmost need.
The snow, a shroud so pure, embraces broken bones,
While echoes of his past ascend in spectral tones:
A mother’s lullaby, a comrade’s final breath,
The silence after guns, the hollow peace of death.
“Is this the end?” he breathes, his voice a fragile thread,
As visions dance—a hearth, a face, a letter read.
The mountain, mute and cold, absorbs his fading cry,
And blots his name from time, as centuries pass by.
No stone shall mark his sleep, no dirge his deeds proclaim—
The snows erase his trail, the wind forgets his name.
Yet in the twilight’s hush, when shadows stretch and yearn,
A ghostly figure treads where ice and starbeams burn.
Forever bound to climb, to seek a peace denied,
He haunts the frozen slopes, by memory crucified.
Thus ends the soldier’s quest—not glory, but the night,
Where all lost hopes descend, and vanish from the light.
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