Tempest Ii Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

You will never know
How many smiles have buried
A thousand silent aches;
How many unseen floods
Have risen behind these eyes
Whenever forgotten years
Return with their heavy footsteps.

Many have walked this road.
Many more will follow.
But I have crossed it twice—
Each crossing leaving me
More abandoned than before,
More familiar with the language
Of being forgotten.

Friends dissolved
Into the dust of tribulation,
Their voices carried away
By winds too fierce to resist.
Yet, Time,
Remain my truest consolation;
For every wound, however deep,
Must one day learn the discipline of healing.

Nature herself
Became a bitter companion,
Teaching me that even the strongest trees
Bow before relentless storms.
Still, I remained—
Outcast, outclassed, unbroken—
On a road that welcomed others
While testing every step I took.

Yet I have learned this much:

No tempest owns the sky forever.
The darkest cloud
Must one day surrender its rain.
The fiercest wind
Must grow weary of its own rage.
And every traveller
Who refuses to abandon the road
Will, at last,
Meet the quiet country of dawn.