[WHISPER] "Due never to part until the end…"
Dead leaves fill a long dried fountain,
Looming elms cast long shadows broken.
I stand in the courtyard bathed in dawn,
The air like snow before the rising sun.
With a passing glance, I espy two shapes;
Winged creatures, locked in a deathless gaze.
With grotesque facial features, set in stone,
They're without judgement in an eternal pose.
I retrace the path I'd taken in dream,
Towards the manor, past the perched sentries.
Within the foyer, grey darkness entombs,
Ominous in its stillness, silence assumes.
A desolate chill creeps through my spine,
Her scent ignites, a burning pyre inside me.
Atop the stairs, curtains flutter with a passing breeze,
The draft, it seems it beckons to me -
With a gentle caress, a phantom's breath.
Like a dreary dream, all colors unseen,
I ascend the steps in furtive loneliness.
Tears swell to thoughts of a dead romance.
All else drained, I'm left, as though possessed.
The billowing drapes splash light in waves
Across the floor as if in play.
Through the open window of the balconied hall,
I regard the verdant garden with a distant lull.
Within the silence of the solarium air,
Something reaches to avert my frozen stare.
From across the garden, to a balcony,
A shadow shifts in darkness, nearly unseen.
Her face appears as a quivering fade,
Like an open window and a candle flame.
Her voice faint as though carried by wind,
A haunting chorus from depths within…
Past words come and go, then return again:
"Due never to part until the end."
This bedroom holds only loneliness…
But for her lingering scent, undiluted and restless.
A sliver of light pierces through the velvet blackness,
Like a shimmer of hope, distant but within grasp.
In the solarium below, a pale form shows…
Beneath dawns glow she gracefully weaves,
Through morning glories and black locust trees.
A slender nymph and dark flowing hair hair,
She slips from the garden to the yard beyond,
I leap from the balcony, to follow her there.
Under the orange flood of the eastern horizon,
A condor soars upon a Northern wind -
Which seems to whisper: "Until the end".
The manor shadows the yard from the reach of the sun,
I survey the lawn and the orchards beyond,
For my beautiful love, whom from me runs.
I call her name… silence answers,
I fell her - magnetic - my heart drums faster.
Blood colors the soil at my feet,
Into the orchards, a sanguine path leads.
Within the fruit trees, awash in vibrant glare,
I find her there, flawless, her body bare.
She lies as sleep atop fallen leaves,
A deathly pose, she no longer breathes.
From her neck she bled into the earth,
My heart departs; my soul's left with her.
Had she chose to leave, was this destiny?
How cruel fate, has dealt this hand to me!
Her face appears as a quivering fade,
Like an open window and a candle flame.
Her voice faint as though carried by wind,
A haunting chorus from depths within…
Past words come and go, then return again:
"Due never to part until the end."
She was lain to rest by a hyaline creek,
Amongst the willows; a closed casket, and a priest.
"How shall the burial rite be read?
The solemn song be sung?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
That ever died so young?" *
I would not see her without breath,
Though her beauty is deathless…
[WHISPER] I can fell her…
* Quotations; excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe's 'A Paen'