Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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The Death of a Savior

by Michael Carl Musser


Author's Note:This poem is a continuation of the story begun in The Last Avatar of Light, and The Death of Sirti

As the wind howled through the blackened hall,
The mortar cracked and crumbled, as did the stricken wall,
And amid the ashes, a sinister figure stood
With sword, and shield, and staff of unearthly wood.

He stood, proud, victorious, winner of a few piles of ash;
His enemy, defeated? He knew not, but there was nothing left to bash.
Had he won? Was this day done? But there was nothing left to win
For he had gone and found an original sin.

An original sin you say, one never done before?
A sin that to this day we can still abhor?
For the tomb was dead, a few piles of ash for the wind to blow
And of his great victory and sacrifice, there was nothing left to show.

And so the Last Avatar of Light was forgotten,
His tomb destroyed, the memories became rotten;
And through the centuries, the Darkness laughed,
And, as an irony, wrote itself into his epitaph.


© 1998 Michael Carl Musser

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