Montenegro Aria
(First Movement)

Time stood still
While twilight faded
In the beginning
My dreams stood silent,
Monte-Christo fell dead,
Gasping for life.

Echoes from the shadow lands,
Cut like daggers from the wind,
Light fell in meadow fields
Where Montenegro fed his cranes.
Their long legs wallowed through
Mud and mire
With a fist of exclamation.
He fell to his knees
And sired to heaven.

“Forgive me O God for my sins
Build my faith from your tempests
To keep safe this life for all time,
To raise my dead sail from the depths
Where my heart has sunk, left hung
On that gallows pole,
Take me now and purify my soul."

Adagio

“If I were a sailing man
Escaping Devil’s Island,
I’d run from these Guyana shores
Like a bastard from hell
To my French alpine hills,
The Atlantic waters
Swell and sway.
The whales are cruel
Madness weighs."

“I’ll not see the world from my cell,
From this prison,
My jailer comes to kill me,
He met his fate today.”

Brutish is the song.
Monte Christo sings,
His contemplation grim,
His reflection dulling senses
Already lost to him.
Where is his butterfly queen
To save him from this worried plight?


Allegro

Tiger shark, tiger shark
Swimming near the tide,
Hungry for blood
Rid me of this life.
Condemn me if you must,
My raft’s broken of its trust.
Take me now - I succumb;
What I thought a new beginning
Is an ending just begun.


Refrain on A Mariner's Greed
(Second Movement of Montenegro Aria)

Allegretto

"Blue is the moon
Blue sea silver swells surround me
Rise like pillars
I sail on wings of fire

Neptune damns me
To the salty brine
Assaults my senses
A demon comes to
Greet me."

Monte Christo falters
In his raft on this sea
With no past
He sails about his
Lonely way
To dream of home
Where his Albatross play.

To sleep upon his bed
To his darling sweetheart
To keep her warm through
The nights while the world
Has stilled
To kiss her once, kiss
Her twice
To make his swamps
A hope filled plantation
To please his lust and greed
With rice his crop
To drink with a twisted
Smile with a smidge of tea.

Adagio

"Softer still his sirens sing
Their voices in my ears
Stop this torment begone
From my heart
You sweet and beautiful things
Why should you judge me
Let me live and dream.

Those prison walls were a hellish
Place that left me
Sullen and wired
I'll not be a monster to the low
Or the weak
I'll not be a braggart, evil
Or cruel whose bite is bittersweet.

Neptune condemn me if you will
Stop these tempests swells
I'll give you my soul
It's worth a king’s ransom
Just let me live again
To be with my desire."
Finis

He sailed on through
The seas for several weeks
It seemed.

He did begin his life again
With his sweetheart darling
He made his fortune well

The debt paid
He sailed his ship
To a Pacific island shore
As the thing he most hated
He fell into the sea
And was heard from again.

Inspired by Dumas's Count of Monte Christo, an epic of survival, greed, shaming the gods, and bitter redemption.

Lead poem in my Book Montenegro Aria and Poetic Adventures by Synergebooks.

. Joel L Young 2002.