The Death Of Hope Poem by Anton K

It's quiet now.
The candle's out and
every silver lining has a cloud.
The flower's been plucked and
its petals have fallen and
shriveled in the stagnant air.
The song has ended and forfeited its
grip in favour of evergreen silence.
The silken curtains are torn and
bitten, digested by the freshly-hatched
offspring of moths, dusty-winged
and dying on the greasy windowsill.
The scent of the summer garden
has been amputated by emotionless Time.
The trees are
growing solemn and grey,
and the fingers
of winter languidly
lessen their pulse.
The shadows of branches
in the night address me.
Their bony hands
summon me and I follow.

Whispers itch in
my ears and I think
of Hope, as the Greeks
of old described her.
Hope was a spirit, imprisoned with
all the other evils
in a box or jar
entrusted to the woman
Pandora. Forbidden by the
gods to open the jar, Pandora could
not resist the seductive voice
of ever-goading curiosity. She
lifted the lid and out flew all the evils
and diseases into the
earth - infecting the
world with their cankered selves.
Quickly had Pandora shut the jar -
but only Hope had not escaped - it
begged and bargained to be freed, but
was unheeded by the woman Pandora.
Hope was buried, encased forever,
bound like the Titan to
the rock by the sea. Hope alone
was withheld from the unfortunate
inhabitants of earth - and so it has been
ever since. Men and women trust
in mirages and dust. And the
hoarse cries of Hope were suffocated
in the darkness long ago.