The Fountain of Youth

-A.C. Marr-

At the claws of a torrent and treacherous mount,

Lay a village, entranced and torn by its gales,

For a secret it held, of a mystical fount,

That all mankind and earth begged of its land.

As the dark and great shadow of the shrouded indeed,

Was not yet revealed to a strange yearning, world,

Desperate for youth, for life, and for greed,

The secret, soon, would at last be unveiled.

But Lo! Was it kept in the darkness for light,

And not one whispered word strayed from the leave,

Thought at prolonged last, a war in the night,

With nature as axis and all others weak men.

And the mountain then spewed the ash and the flame,

Drowning the village below in deep black.

But one man endured and rushed to his claim

Of the shimmering pool that ended all death.

The triumphant being drank with the utmost of haste;

The fire still flowing, the skies now in night;

The man now immortal and mentality upon waste;

The remnants of the secret and inexplicable fount.

But the clash of great evil nearing his way,

Was now but a nuisance, a conquest, a sneer,

For then he would subsist to the night of all day,

And slung round his back, a glistening glass.

Death was now dominated and greed did ensnare.

The soulless villager thieved immortality’s sum,

Of the clear crystal water; the fount dry and bare.

A stopper was placed, a miracle stolen from sight.

The fire arrived there, flooding his feet,

And an agony arose; as awful and ghastly…

That death now desired, as heaven to meet,

The Lord of all things, who looked down in shame.

It was at precise moment, at that perished place,

That the being now grasped, in spite of his pain,

That never again would he see a glowing face,

Who would not depart, and the love then be lost.

For the mystic did not heal the hurt and all doom,

But merely bestowed a rare prospect to view

What many believed and entirety did assume

As the Paradise of Life and The Fountain of Youth.