This lonely landscape holds a story
Of love and longing, despair and defiling.
The ancient oaks guard their secret sorrows
And the wind still whispers its poetry.
He came through the forest, sword in hand,
Stalking a deer with feline grace
He was made to conquer, his savage cry
Reigned supreme in that isolated land.
Then the boughs parted to reveal a glade,
The throne of the woodland princess.
Her limbs were slender twigs in moonlight,
Her smile was the silver stream in the shade.
The hunter gazed in rapt wonder
At the ethereal beauty before him.
She, too, was caught by human passion.
There they bound themselves together.
He could not bear to let her fire pass into smoke.
He stayed; he built them a house, a wooden lodge,
His great axe hewed the ancient ebony, while she
Wept over the stump of the once-mighty oak.
Ah, but their love was great and deep!
Arms entwined, souls embraced, passion
Permeating every fibre of their beings…
The nymph had never such joys reaped.
She neglected her age-old kingdom’s call.
Like her wards, she too had found her mate.
But the love she found was not in her fate.
Her pristine realm showed signs of pall.
Blood besmeared the mourning willow,
Remnants of the kills for his appetite.
The corpses of mutilated trees lay around,
Foul flecks defiled the clear stream’s flow.
The untouched landscape cried in pain,
What blasphemy, what sacrilege at his hands!
Ancient nature writhed under man’s fleeting touch.
She knew that man, too, must pass like the rain.
She watched him fall.
His graceful body taut in a plunge
From the cliff to the abyss below.
She watched him fall.
Then the spiritess returned to her oaken throne,
But her smile is forevermore broken.
Pearls of infinite sadness wind their way
From her hollow eyes down her cheekbone.
Around her, the woods revived, paid the cost.
But the lonely moon even now stands watch
Over the desolate stumps, the still-black waters
And the dirge of a thousand sunrises she lost.
The midnight breeze blows around me,
