Bard of Elation

By Bismay Rath

A crowd of silence crowned him,

Winds wept, the snow his sorry audience,

The city in light, grue and glamour,

Mocked his lyre, unstrung still.

Nyx rose, mooned upon his wretched mind,

Arteries run dry, the morgue of mankind.

There stood a bard, lonesome and loathed,

Weaving lores of a grove unsheltered,

By warmth, not by nectars of marrow,

A galley for the ghoulish, where rot smelled of orchids.

He spoke of such atrocities-

Love and skies shattered in finality,

Hounding honey from wounds inure, a feast for the forsaken. 

Paths precarious, gullet of the Wolf God,

A trail blighted by curses, treasure in tow,

Tales of the golden grove

Scrapped desire into minds afresh: 

Beneath oaks older than regret,

Perching is doom donned in black,

Don't mistake him a mourner, he laments lies,

His feathers foster ashes of burnt empires.

Beneath his gaze, shall the plunder be sought for a grail, 

When found and festered,

Thou shalt mock that golden touch, fleeting and frail.

Drown in desires and drunkenness,

Crooked coins twist even saints to stone,

Bathe in cream while orphans lick your drains,

Feast on stars, blind the skies in luxury,

Take your forks,

Scrape your golds from plates of bone. 

Thus quoth the consequence-

The bard's heart wilted with ash,

His lyre- had but a breeze brushed its strings,

Orpheus would snap in envy.

Laudable are the trinkets of truth entombed

In his tongue, that once threaded time,

Now muffled verdicts, gulped into his thorn-laden throat.

But in silence he's savoured, 

He knows at last, and laughs-

Teeth bared at God, howling as his mind crumbles, 

He laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

By Bismay Rath