Flowers. Will they effloresce?

Or trampled by stiff sandals?

Shall her garden evanesce,

By the blindness of vandals?

A whisper slithers sibilant,

Echoes throughout these caverns,

Fear-filled men stay vigilant,

Their scheme conjured in taverns.

A false courage emboldens,

Now a mad need for bloodshed,

To fate they are beholden,

For they shall face a godhead.

Before anger magnified,

A profound sadness prevailed,

Now her heart has vulcanized,

Years of injustice travailed.

Hers’, an untold perspective,

Banished for being sacred,

Men’s opinions, subjective,

Love has turned into hatred.

Alone in life’s eventide,

In her garden for hours,

Statues abound, petrified,

In contrast with her flowers.

I’ve written this poem in the Ae Freislighe form with septasyllabic quatrains in which the first and third lines of each quatrain rhyme with trisyllabic words, and the second and fourth lines rhyme with bisyllabic words. The final word of the poem is the same as the first. This is the tragic story of Medusa, and a wider portrait of humankind, of which there are those who empathize. Ae Freislighe is an Irish form of poetry.