Hello Darkness (Testaments In Solitude)

“Hello, Darkness, my old friend; I’ve come to talk with you again…” Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence Darkness, old friend of mine, once again you have come. In my life, your presence has ceased to be conceptions of childhood dreams. I have come to know you, constant visitor, like a brother of a sort. Your absences, however, are not missed, to give you an honest thought. But surely, you wouldn’t keep a grudge. As borne out of human experience, you have become larger than life. In my moments of grief, you have remained beside me, like a sentinel. Many times I’ve tried to banish you, like some do to a dirty old beggar. My dream is for your exile in a far-away land, never to return. I’ve tried to deny you, like Simon before the dawn. But still, your load bears heavily in my mind, like a gypsy wagon in the back of an old stallion. Like a restless ghost you haunt me, to cover my days in gloom, like a blanket over a sleeping child. Sometimes, you engulf me in despair, like a drowning man in a forgotten lake. I try to hide, like the ostrich with his head in the earth. I cannot run away, not even the eagle is swifter than the wind. If you can’t beat them, join them, we are told. Surrender? To give in, like a convict to the gallows? No! Death is more honorable than defeat. But I’ve thought about you, seriously contemplating your existence. You are like a cursed diamond of a dead maharajah. To know it’s history is to appreciate it more, but still remaining a mystery beyond understanding. Only a man who has wrestled with you can embrace the light. For how to know that which is good and just with eyes that haven’t seen cruelty and misery? Only he who has walked, alone in the rain, can run through the meadows to greet the advent of summer. For how can we play in the green pastures and rest beside still waters without passing the valley of the shadow of death? But then darkness, old friend of mine, if the time has come for you to leave, then I will rejoice. I may greet you with a fond farewell, but my heart bids you never to knock at my door again. May our paths never meet in the crossroads of Fate. Photo courtesy of Flickr.com