Quadragenarian s Lay, Elegy for a Faded Tide 2024

ARDALLION
"Quadragenerian's Lay: Elegy for a Faded Tide" (2024)



A Bed of Passion
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A bed of passion, where virgins and harlots alike have been received; a bed of earth that once nurtured the blossoms of Eden’s Garden, with breasts parched and shadowed; a bed where the unburied exiles of a long-lost paradise tasted fleeting bliss...

Here, the dry lips of experience and the tender, unbloomed lips of youth intertwined in a fervent rite, each honoring the other, drinking of one another, becoming one in but a moment’s breath. A strong hand, now weightless, hovered above a slender forearm, barely brushing the velvet of its bashful softness with the tips of its nails.

The stillness of an embrace, breath in place of words, ignorance in place of the bitter truth that bounds intimacy, rendering it almost beyond reach—a bed of forgetfulness instead of the post-coital tristesse of empty night roads, as barren as the promise unspoken...

A bed of sanctity, where none are stained, none condemned; a bed that has known more true love than any fiery sermon, more than any desperate confession on earth.

Rest your weary head, be ye youth or aged man, lay your heart upon this bed and breathe the fragrance of roses, preserved in the stillness of eternity.



All Here Doth Wait for Thee
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All here doth wait for thee: great drops of rain upon the yellowed glass of the night’s dim lamp, trembling in rhythm with the uneven melody that springs from the music box; a draught in a quiet caf;, and the scent of rain lingering beyond the window on a cool English morn. And in the hearth, the flames do leap so merrily. Dry wood crackles, ablaze, as though thou art already here beside me, wrapped in a blanket, thy heart rapt with the words of a book, entrusting thyself unto this bachelor’s abode.

In the ancient house that gazeth upon the azure lake, I, waking first, do hear the breath of thy slumber, and catch the sweet scent of thy sleeping hair. As though caught within a frame from some distant world, our faces, joyous and stilled, art captured forever. And this frame is carved within a frozen heart, like sunlight that lingers behind the curtain of closed lids. The trace of light heralds our meeting, its solemn decree.

All the objects round, once familiar and unnamed, now wear a different hue. And the world itself, as though cast upon film, like a tale unwinding on the silver screen, with the voice that speaks from unseen lips, and the warmth that rests at the bedside – all here doth wait for thee...



Alfraganus
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There, where, beyond the ashen rim of the horizon, a scattering of amber stars, bathed in golden light, doth hide; where the spring winds, with serpentine grace, send kites aloft into the heavens; there, where the East of my soul doth begin…

In the shadowed and dusty halls of the library, I recall the enchanted breath of youthful apprentices, in the ancient web of the balustrade, where countless leisurely steps were lost, in the eternal rustle of worn pages and the scent of ink…

The sun of his eyes cast forth rays of knowledge upon the raised circle of the astrolabe.

Alfraganus, did thy wisdom know, as it knew the countless stars and planets, and beheld the roundness of the earth, the sweetness and bitterness of countless kisses, the soul-crushing melancholy of the unattainable? Did the horizon of human tenderness beckon thee, as the horizon of the known did lead thee on?



For a Faded Tide
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Lo, I stand as a spent candle upon a barren sacrificial altar, my gray tresses weeping rain upon forgotten gravestones, whilst I am showered in the snow of countless ages. From my hollow eyes fall icy stones, the futile tears of a soul undone.
The madness of my worshipful adoration for beauty hath met its end.

She, with a gaze proud and cruel as the winter wind, turned from me in scornful disgust. Though youth yet clings to my frame, in her eyes I am but a loathsome wretch — an old man before my time. Her pity, gilded in the thin veneer of interest, was fleeting as a false dawn. It lingered only long enough to bestow upon me one last cruel and ruinous hope — a star that kindled only to reduce me to cinder and ash.

How shall I endure the days hence, bereft of her tender lips, her gentle touch?
Accursed be this stale and withering age; blessed be youth, swift and radiant! So cries the idolater who dwelleth within me. The final wave hath receded, and the sun shall parch my lips and snout upon the desolate shore where the great ocean withdraweth forever.

I have beheld no joy.
I have known not the fullness of love.
Once only did I brush against its fleeting shadow and, in that moment, I understood:
Nowhere to go.
No time to be.
For me, there remaineth naught to live for.




The Dark Psalm of My Undoing
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My dirges, like sable flocks of sightless, frost-bound ravens, return to the sepulcher of my widowed heart.
The scattered remnants of my verse have fallen upon mine eyes, a funereal shroud woven of death's dark wings.
With the final line, I have writ my requiem — a bible for the dead.
The indigo hues of dawning morn, like shades of despairing souls, fall heavy upon the twilight of my tormented flesh.

Lo, I loathe myself, for strength eluded me in my frailty, and lust hath claimed the sacred treasures of my shadowed depths —
The obsidian truths of a profounder candor.
Neither the gilded balm of sleep, nor the silken snare of ethereal dreams, hath graced my wearied lids.

Ceaseless abasement, unyielding shame, irremediable sorrow have clad me in a carapace of wounds.
The leprous tide pours from my crown, and endless grief is the altar of mine existence,
An eternal shrine to ruin and desolation.

When, O cruel fate, shall my heart be sundered,
That it might scatter in sable flocks—sightless, frozen, lifeless —
Bearing maledictions and revelations to the throne of the Almighty?
Who shall cleanse the ebon stain of my curse?
Who shall atone for this damn'd fate, choked by wrath and fettered in helpless despair?

Shall my final breath be but a sigh of ignominy?
Judge me as thou wilt, deem me as thou must,
Yet this I vow — thus am I, and thus shall I remain.




A Dirge for the Flesh
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Mine flesh is but the husk of emptiness,
Mine light, the faint and sickly flicker of night roads.
Mine dream — oh, there is naught more beautiful than it —
So simple, and yet...
A thing that never shall be.

I let thee go, as an autumn leaf shall fall from a hand long dead,
I let thee go, as the strong, noble youths shall let mine body drift
Upon the mourning raft, borne by the river's dark embrace,
Where autumn leaves shall bury me in place of flowers.

Oh, how I yearn to taste thy bloodied lips once more,
To drown within thy breath, to perish sweetly there.
The abomination of flesh, the smolder of lust —
This is mine being, plagued by the blight of decaying dreams.

Brecht's angel, wings torn and broken, drinks of ichor,
Swooning in unholy desire.
Mine tongue, unbidden, traces his lips,
But no longer may I profane his form.

A silence deepens 'neath the sunset of unsated days,
An empty night sweeps away the sinful traces with its snow.
And thou — thou wast never found among them.
Yet all this, all, I called love.
All I called love...





Bliss Cometh Swiftly as the Flood
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Beneath the haze of slumber on December's chill morn,
And 'midst the warm, soft tears of rain on highways forlorn,
Bliss descendeth, sudden, like wine’s heady embrace.
Thy breath, a wraith upon the air, thy kisses pale and fleet,
Thy passion, a wayward flame, unbound, untamed, and sweet.

Bliss Cometh Swiftly as the Flood,
Yet in its wake, sorrow claimeth the heart.

Again am I bid to depart, to meet the winds anew,
My visage worn, my soul yet heavy from adieu.
Again must I whisper farewell, lest stillness chain the dance.
Each step I take begets my woe, a thorn in life's expanse.
An endless wheel of partings and returns I must endure,
Forever caught 'twixt bliss and pain, uncertain, insecure.

Bliss Cometh Swiftly as the Flood,
Yet in its wake, sorrow claimeth the heart.


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