What light be this that flees mine eye,
a silver spectre lost in night’s embrace?
Once radiant, now waning, dim as a lantern
suffocated ‘neath the smothering shroud of time.
Mine hands dost grasp at shadows ill-defined,
a world unstitched, its fabric frayed
where echoes of selves long since vanished
bleed into the mist of formless yesterdays.
Hark! The road bends, yet feet falter,
caught ‘twixt the weight of what was and what is not.
A major inconvenience, quoth the blind stars,
mocking as they flicker in jest of lost direction.
Who art thou, standing mirrored in the haze?
Blurred souls, wraiths of what once held shape
dost thou remember thy name, thy purpose?
Or hast thou too faded, like me, into the void?
Laeeq Orrie, a 19-year-old aspiring South African poet.