The Mariner’s Lament in Silent Stones
A galleon’s bones lay scattered ‘cross the shoal,
Where Neptune’s wrath had carved his vengeful vow
Through timber ribs that once kissed heavens whole.
A lone survivor tread the brine-soaked path,
His salt-cracked lips still whispering her name,
While memory’s tide bore fragments of her laugh
Through coral halls where light forgets to flame.
Three moons had drowned since tempests tore his oath,
Three moons since stars forsook their sacred charts,
When through the fog there loomed a spectre growth—
A spire piercing clouds where sorrow starts.
No bell-tongued welcome rang across the bay,
No lanterns bloomed in sacerdotal keep,
Just gargoyle sentinels of crumbling grey
That watched him climb the stairway steeped in sleep.
The cathedral’s breath was parchment, old and thin,
Its vaulted ribs like some leviathan’s cage,
Where shadows pooled where daylight dared not win
And time lay coiled in dust on every stage.
He traced the nave where echoes dared not dwell,
Past columns carved with mermaids’ stony tears,
While through rose windows, twilight’s fingers fell
To paint false dawns on tombs of bygone years.
“Speak, vaulted silence!” cried the wretch undone,
“Where tides of truth might salve this festered wound?
She waits where cliff meets fury—I, who swore
To bear her from that storm-racked battleground!”
The stones replied in voices mortar-bound,
A choir of whispers from the crypt’s black maw:
“We keep no truths but those the drowned have found,
No promises but those the deep can gnaw.”
Then—lo!—a flicker ‘midst the transept’s gloom,
A figure cloaked in weavings of the mist,
Who moved as tempests move—a living doom—
With eyes like shipwrecks where no soul exists.
“Know this,” it hissed through lips of rotting twine,
“The truth you seek lies anchored in your breast:
You turned the helm when fortune’s stars did shine,
Chose vengeance o’er the love you once confessed.”
The mariner fell as though the keel had split,
His hands clawed earth that bled sea-salted dew,
For now he saw the nightmare he had writ—
That storm-tossed night when wrath’s cold poison grew.
He’d seen the sails—his rival’s crimson flag—
Had heard her pleading through the cannon’s roar,
Yet steered his ship to war’s blood-drenched crag
While waves devoured her voice along the shore.
The cloaked one raised a hand of barnacle lace:
“Behold the wage of choices carved in pride.”
The walls dissolved to visions of her face
Pressed ‘gainst the rocks where he had left love’s tide.
Her final scream became the gulls’ lament,
Her outstretched arms the roots of twisted pines,
Her flowing hair the kelp’s green monument
Where silver fish now thread through bone-made shrines.
“One month I’ve fought the currents’ strangling might,
One month pursued this shrine’s deceptive light,
All to undo that hour’s fatal blight—
To clasp her hand through death’s unyielding night!”
The spectre’s laugh shook candles long since cold:
“Fool! No cathedral holds such sovereign grace
To mend the pact your fury’s knife unrolled—
You bartered truth for passion’s brief embrace.”
Now comes the dirge that winds through marble veins,
As dawn’s first blush ignites the eastern panes
To crown the mariner in ruby chains—
A king of loss enthroned in mortal pains.
He claws at stones that melt to liquid blue,
His lungs drink floods from arches overhead,
While high above, the gulls still shriek their cue:
“Promises sink where living men lie dead!”
The tide recedes. The cathedral stands anew,
Its altars dry, its shadows pure as theft,
No trace remains of hearts the waters knew—
Just barnacle scripts of vows the deep has left.
Far off, a widow scans the ruthless foam,
Her lantern’s glow outlasted by the ache
That carves her name on cliffs he’ll never roam—
Two souls undone by truths they dared to break.
