The Exile’s Last Vesper

No altar’s gold nor relic’s gleam his eyes detain,
But one frail star alight beyond the cobalt pane,
A silver specter pierced through stained glass’s hue,
Its tremulous beam a thread his soul pursues.
He pauses, gaunt as winter’s bough stripped bare,
To trace its gleam—a ghost within the frigid air.

“O sentinel of dusk,” he murmurs to the glow,
“Who guards the threshold where forgotten sorrows go,
Bear witness now to this, my final, fateful hour,
When exile’s chains grow heavier than stone can tower.
Here, where the walls enshrine what hearts have wept,
I lay my burden down…and bid the world accept.”

A rustle stirs the dark—a figure, veiled and slight,
Emerges from the labyrinthine aisles of night.
Her footsteps, lighter than a moth’s despairing wing,
Unfold like memory’s breath, a half-remembered thing.
Her eyes, twin pools where midnight’s anguish swims,
Reflect the star’s faint cry, the edge of crumbling hymns.

“You came,” he whispers, voice a frayéd string,
“Though oceans, wars, and years stretched withering.”
“I vowed to tread,” she answers, “every road you’ve crossed,
To find the grave your heart deemed worth the cost.”
Their hands, once joined as roots in earth entwine,
Now hover, pale and parted, like a severed line.

“Recall,” she pleads, “the vale where willows wept,
Where twilight’s blush our secret oaths had kept?
You spoke of realms beyond the mortal pale,
Of songs unsung, of winds that bore no sail.
Yet here we stand, where silence chokes the air—
Is this the dream you clasped, the crown you wear?”

He turns, his profile carved by grief’s own knife,
“The dream was but a lantern through the strife.
The crown? A circlet forged from thorns and dew,
That leeched the blood of all I cherished true.
Yet still, the star that guided me afar
Now leads me where no earthly bonds can mar.”

Her laugh, a brittle chime, disturbs the gloom,
“So all our yesteryears were but a womb
For this? To meet as shades in this hushed tomb?”
A tear escapes—a comet’s fleeting spark—
“You were my north, my evenfall, my ark.
What port awaits you, where my voice expires?”

He lifts a locket, cold against his breast,
Within, a curl of hair, long laid to rest.
“The child,” he breathes, “whose face I dared not name,
Whose cradle-song became this dirge of shame…
Her phantom rides the winds that scour the plain.
I walk the path my failures etched in rain.”

She stumbles back, as though the stones had groaned,
“You flee her ghost, yet raise her shroud, full-blown,
To cloak your flight from life’s unyielding hold?
Is exile but a tale the coward’s told?”
The star, as if in answer, dims its fire,
As shadows coil like serpents ’round the spire.

“You judge me justly,” sighs the broken man,
“Yet know this: when the gales of ruin began,
I sought to shield you from the tempest’s wrath,
To bear alone the scourge of sorrow’s path.
But roots once split can ne’er be knit anew—
The blight was mine; the axe’s swing was true.”

She grips the pulpit’s edge, her strength undone,
“And must the daughter pay for the father’s sin?
You left her bloom to choke on frost’s decree,
Yet dare to kneel here, courting piety?
The star you worship is a corpse’s light—
A dead sun’s echo through the shroud of night!”

A gust descends, extinguishing the flame
That flickered by the saint’s time-blotted name.
The darkness swells, a tide devoid of grace,
As iron steps resound through sacred space.
Beyond the rose window, blackened now and blind,
The star dissolves to ash upon the wind.

He staggers, clutching at his withered heart,
“So ends the pilgrimage…and ends the art
Of hope. Farewell, my lost, my final friend.
This vault shall house the love we could not mend.”
His breath, a rattle, merges with the deep
As stone by stone, the cathedral seals his sleep.

She kneels, her palms pressed flat on frigid tiles,
And hears the distant toll of midnight’s trials.
No dirge ascends, no requiem’s embrace—
Just silence, thick as guilt, in that vast place.
The shadows, sated, slink from nave to door,
And exile’s crown is borne to myth no more.

Dawn finds the aisles abandoned, still, and stark,
A lone lark’s elegy sung to the dark.
Where two souls met beneath a star’s frail plea,
A single rose lies frozen—memory’s debris.
Its petals, clenched like fists against the cold,
Hold fast the tale no living tongue has told.