Sparkatale

The Hermit

 

Alone, upon a barren

Rock-hewn cliffside,

Overlooking all the world,

There sits a hermit,

Gazing out with bitter heart

And tortured soul

Upon a world he neither loves

Nor understands.

 

And he curses all that

World he long ago abandoned,

For it could not love him,

It could not understand,

And the grief-struck one

Climbed up upon the mountain

To the garden cliffside

Far above the world that forgot him.

 

And as he sat upon the cliff,

Hours passed and years flew by,

The garden then became a wilderness,

And the grief-struck hermit

Turned to bitterness,

For the refuge he had chosen

Withered away, now filled

With pain the hermit could not bear.

 

And he cursed the deadly silence

Up above that long-lost world,

A distant bell-toll wafted up

From somewhere, and in jealousy,

The hermit turned to hatred,

For someone else was missed more than

He was, and he longed for some kind soul

To sound a bell for him.

 

But the bell he heard was rung for him

Upon a church tower, where a song

Rang out through all the valley for the one

Who had abandoned them so long ago.

 

Their memories passed into legend

And the space that separated them

Grew unassailable, as the silence

Rang forever through that lonely land.

 

27/3/19