Nightfall is the hour that shrouds him.
Knowing what he knows, see what he's seen.
He seeks out a substance to cloud him,
and should some wayward traveler pass upon his way.
He'll tell them a tale, and it's always the same.
No man can name what's not meant to be named.
A mist at his eye,
a catch in his throat.
Psychosis embodied,
barely a man, yet not quite a ghost.
There is no name.
There is no name for the thing that's not meant to be named.
Sorrow and madness in one,
an unseemly aura about him.
Ragged in sight and reeking of ale,
his detractors find reason to doubt him.
The sea, he says, is boiling with sin like some vast sunken Sodom.
And he laughs not at the jest that the
devil himself doth reside at the bottom.
One thousand grips do rise,
stronger than timber or canvas of ship.
Cries to lovers, gods, and mothers.
Issue from men, the last word on their lips.