Dolor

Drifting slowly, silent Dolor’s pitiful form

dragged himself along, exhausted,

watching vain, false hopes –

hopes flitting past him and the goddess.

 

Withered and wasted arms,

tired and aching legs, still kept ever driving him forwards,

quivering with the burden of untold griefs;

 

Griefs as countless as the grains of sand on the shore, leaves in a forest,

stalks of corn once so often seen at harvest time;

stalks which now ceased to bear some – any -

craved, desired, crucial sustenance for the people of the earth.  Crops caused to

wither by the neglect of Ceres, mother of the earth, goddess of the harvest.

 

The once fruitful fields, swaying gently in the mellow summer breeze,

nodding sleepily with heavy heads of corn, full of sun and rain,

had long perished. 

Desolate earth was all that remained, cold and wintered, barren and bare,

 

Over which Dolor wandered, his gaunt

And sallow face immortally etched by the burden of turmoil.

Pale presence, trembling lips, sunken eyes

spoke - and kept speaking – of innumerable nights, alone with tears of anxiety.

Wasted body racked with the sobs of despair, of lost Joy

- Joy fleetingly come and gone -

not even a shadow of a being.

 

His every presence hung over Ceres,

trailing steadily and stealthily behind the goddess, step for step,

as she drifted over the landscape in search of her beloved child,

Prosperina.