Once Upon A Time Poem by Sashka Salvatore

Once upon a time of timid mists and snows
Lay a hill so woebegone,
The qualms and anguish it had brought
Had all his torments done.

Down thorny roads his feet did tour, blistered, bare,
‘Twas a vast and opaque night
Lit not by faerie children’s care
But tortures of this knight.

A golden heart he sought for his hairy one
To exchange and love to feel,
A maiden fairer than the Sun
His sordid wish to heal.

Beneath the rocky valley with black trees bound,
Never where clouds haggard pour -
Doth he lumbered, upon the ground
A maiden he sought soared:

“What thou wish for peril brings, harm and deceit,
I shall give thee heart of gold
But I warn thee – price will lethal be”
Spoke she to the knight bold.

The knight pondered not, but leapt for heart of gold,
Her chest ripped open, her blood
Soaked his fingers as he took hold
Silencing the heart’s thud.

Not the fingers, not the kisses, not the tears
Would bring back the maiden’s might
As her heart to gold turned, his fears
Were stealing all his light.

Tumbling to his knees, he screeched, abhorring his fate,
The most vile, gruesome thing,
Too late – she had passed through the gate
Death cherished her with wings.

The clouds for once poured down heavily with blood
Soaking the heart once again -
To gold turned the grass and the mud,
Behold – a golden statue of a man.