The Pilgrim

The pilgrim, that's what they call me.

For I wander from home to home,

from vale to vale, from country to country.

People know that I do nothing but roam

and that I have no home, no home

and that I am sad, unable to be free.

I, the pilgrim, often wonder about love

as I see the people tearing apart,

and I cannot stop the thinking so I rove,

glimpsing into men's heart, into men's heart

and I go where there's no chart

for there is the trove in the cove.

Often they see me trudge up in the snow,

bent against the winds, with a rosewood cane,

my red cloak flapping high and low,

sometimes walking silently among the slain,

tutting and cursing that dreadful bane

which makes men suffer such tales of woe.

Long my steps have haunted the darkness

for men have, in their folly, turned me into a pilgrim.

I have oft beheld vast expanses of emptiness

but nowhere have I found them so grim

than in men's mind, none so dim

than in men's eyes. And none so lightless.

The pilgrim, this is now how I am called.

I walk and I count each step and each breath.

I tread on a path leading from cold to cold,

always seeking that which is most uneath,

and I seek solitude and I court death

for I have grown weary of men, and much too old

to continue living among the dead.

And too many think that I can bless

because the world I have seen and read,

while I solely pursue my grim progress

with the only things about me that I possess:

my cloak, my cane and a heart that bled.