Of love across time

In another time, in a kingdom now lost to fire,
We lived and loved in the shadow of an empire,
For its might, its riches, its kindness and rages,
An empire remembered in history's mouldy pages.

A history that speaks of courtiers and kings,
Of their ambition and lust it delightedly sings,
While we lie unmourned, not even a footnote
In the margins of history, of us none ever wrote.

No historian has ever given our lives a voice,
Just as our love was bereft of a choice,
The king's roving eye, once it glanced at you,
At your fair features, your eyes oh so blue.

The innocence of love was brought to an end,
Before the king's power, our lives had to bend,
Shackled and bound, carried as a bride,
You were made to submit to his lust and his pride.

Your body he conquered that unending night,
But your heart remained unmoved by his might,
What use was his power, his riches and fame,
When he saw your lips silently chanting my name.

A swish of his sword and your blood seeped away,
Your skin of peaches turned parched and grey,
You were delivered from all sorrows and pain,
As you slept in peace, tortured and slain.

As dawn broke, I was nailed to a tree,
From the chains of life, I too was free,
I died with a smile, or so it is said,
That morning they killed a man already dead.

When even the shadows have withered away,
At a time when it is neither dusk nor day,
A time after death when you are yet to be born,
The soul is still shackled by love that is gone.

Salvation we denied, this destiny we chose,
From the parting of curtains till they close,
From the first light till darkness holds sway,
From that first life, to this present day.

To be born and reborn, and be born yet again,
And to die each time, like a melody's refrain,
To meet and to part, to love and to lose,
This fate across time is that which we choose.

For to love truly, even though for a moment,
Is worth far more than lives ordinarily spent,
For days stolen together, for a night of peace,
To God's kingdom, we surrendered the keys.

Deep in the forest is a tree no one knows,
Once in a milennium its splendour shows,
Its flowers bloom, but only for a night,
The tree withers away with dawn's first light.

A thousand years it lives for just a single night,
A night when its beauty blinds every sight,
The moon and the stars wait with bated breath,
As it fulfils its destiny and gladly embraces death