Ballad of Orpheus

2021

I have forsaken my time to add

memory to your palimpsest name

ghost of voice ebbing to a halt

in this morbid quest to see your frame

but the underworld seems to exhale

the music of your breathing on loop.

I see hell’s spirits dance as one,

I understand who I have to dupe.

So I bow before the chthonic king,

lay down armour in the viper’s nest,

and play snake charmer, sing, hypnotise

to rouse your soul from its plutonian rest.

You feel like the sepia glow of past

promises hung out to dry as I croon

about the broken chords of your laughter

to death’s dull, dogmatic tune.

Their cystic, Styx tears meander in flux

as they unshackle you from Thanatos’ reign.

Do not look back, they say, patience is virtue;

in a faithless plain lies only pain.

Thus, I traipse through Asphodel’s fields

and steal your name from Lethe’s lithe claws.

For you, I have frozen hell itself –

cheated Death’s own atavistic laws.

But I have loved you too much, piecemeal,

for this risk to have no guarantee.

What if I turn around to see nothing

but the silence of what was you and me?

Trust is a vice I cannot afford so

I turn to see your fleeting figure

and lose you, lose everything at all

that was worth this wretched rigour.

And I had forsaken my time to add

memory to your palimpsest name.

I journeyed to hell’s depths and back

for this only to end with your silence – the same.