The Exile’s Lament

Her name, once sung where springtide rivers flow,
Now lingers mute as winds that shun the snow;
Elara, called in youth’s forsaken day,
Whose soul the Fates unwove in cruel display.
Her eyes, twin pools where midnight’s sorrows drown,
Reflect the ashes of a fallen crown—
Not gold, but hopes entombed ‘neath burdened years,
A realm of silence drowned in unshed tears.

Beneath the yew’s arthritic, knotted shade,
She spins her tales to phantoms she has made:
Of days when laughter tripped through floral lanes,
When love’s sweet seed bore fruit in sunlit rains.
But now her hands, like winter’s brittle twigs,
Trace ancient wounds no mortal bandage rigs,
While through her hut’s wan cracks, the sobbing rain
Recites the dirge of all she might attain.

One eve, as autumn’s throat choked summer’s hymn,
A stranger came, his visage gaunt and grim.
Through fog he crept, a spectre wrapped in grey,
To lay a box where Elara’s footsteps lay.
Of ebony and rusted iron wrought,
It bore a seal with damned obsessions fraught—
A serpent coiled ‘round petals of the rose,
Its fangs pierced deep where no redemption grows.

Within, a locket cold against her breast
Did whisper truths long buried ‘neath unrest.
Two faces smelted in its silver womb:
Her mother’s smile, her father’s eyes of gloom.
Beneath, a scrap of vellum, frayed and thin,
Revealed the script of sins conceived within:
“To Elara, my blood, my fatal vow—
The blight I sowed now crowns thy tender brow.”

Then memory, a viper, struck its kiss—
The night her sire’s last breath escaped as mist.
She saw again his hand, so waxen, frail,
Clutch hers as tempests tore their homestead’s veil.
“Child, flee!” he gasped, “lest they who brand thee witch
Descend with ropes to rend what life Iitch.
The tonic brewed to spare me death’s embrace
They’ll name thy venom, curse thy healer’s grace.”

Too late she sped, too late to curb the lie—
The village square bore torches in the sky.
“Sorceress!” they roared, “whose philtres stole his breath!”
While mothers crossed themselves ‘gainst second death.
No plea she uttered swayed their granite eyes,
Their justice clad in Godless, grim disguise.
They cast her out where winter’s wolves hold court,
And barred the gates ‘gainst mercy’s faint report.

Now, clutching proof her father’s trembling hand
Had sealed her doom ere he could countermand,
Elara knelt where river meets the stone,
And loosed a wail to thaw the glaciers’ bone.
“O father, was thy fear of mortal shame
Worth this, thy child, bereft of name or flame?
Didst thou, in guarding honor’s fleeting trace,
Outweigh the wreckage of thy daughter’s grace?”

The locket slipped, a comet’s dying arc,
To drown where sirens ply their murky work.
No moon beheld her slow, narcotic trudge
Through reeds that grasped like fingers from the sludge.
The village slept, its conscience swaddled deep,
While to her breast she clasped eternal sleep—
A vial’s sharp kiss, dark nectar’s swift release,
To barter peace with Hades’ stern police.

At dawn, the stranger returned, his purpose done,
And found the prize his master’s will had won.
No tear adorned his cheek, so marble-cold,
As he claimed locket from the stiffened hold.
Yet as he turned, a cry split morning’s veil—
A huntsman’s son, who’d tracked some phantom trail,
Stood frozen, seeing in that crystal light
The locket’s face—and knew his own birthright.

“Hold, fiend!” he roared, “that trinket’s twin I wear!
My father’s eyes in hers—they are my share!”
Too late, too late—the stranger’s blade flashed bright,
And stole the youth’s last breath with cruel delight.
Thus two souls joined the river’s voiceless choir,
While far above, in mansions gilt and spire,
A lord smiled, safe, his secret sin entombed—
The bastard daughter’s fate, his conscience exhumed.

Now legends haunt those stones where willows weep,
Of lovers twined in death’s unbreaking sleep.
The villagers, when harvest moons wax red,
Speak low of ghosts that walk the brook’s damp bed.
But none dare name the lord who sowed this woe,
Nor pluck the weed of truth they chose to grow.
Thus Exile’s crown, once borne by one alone,
Now hangs o’er all, in judgment of the sown.

For every heart that closed when mercy knocked,
Each tongue that lied, each ear that truth had blocked,
Wears chains unseen, though free they seem to roam—
Their village but a gilded exile’s home.
And in the earth where Elara’s bones reside,
There blooms a rose no frost nor hate can hide—
Its petals white as innocence betrayed,
Its thorns the shape of choices men have made.

So ends the tale of she who loved too well,
Whose only crime was breaking silence’s spell.
Let trav’lers mark this truth ere they depart:
No exile’s deeper than a closed heart.
The village sleeps, but rot gnaws at its core—
For secrets buried always rise once more.
And rivers bearing witness to our sins
Will sing their dirge till time itself begins.