The Faustian Pact. Poem by Raghu Raman

Desire is the root of all grief and sorrow in this world was all what he prattled.

This enlightened mendicant blathered of desire that left me a bit rattled.

I shrugged it off like mud from soiled greaves in rain without remorse.

For one’s life is unwhole without desire or joy and with such bland discourse.

I pondered again about desire as I walked home at night.

Twas when before my eyes, a flash occurred blinding me of my sight.

What I gazed upon before me for a moment rendered my mind and body catatonic.

It was the Devil himself in the robes of a monk with an aura so dark and inharmonic.

He spoke to me addressing himself as The Dealmaker with a voice of Thunder.

His speech alone was enough to make an army mute and their senses asunder.

He handed over a document to me saying that Life is nothing without a desire unheeded.

He spoke of the mirth of life and living concluding that he was the one that I now needed.

He said he can make my desires and dreams come true, a quote that got me delighted.

Although there is a price for everything in this world, his demand was my soul alighted.

I was stunned on hearing his demand for he had asked for the very vitality of my life.

For I without a soul am a cadaver who is but a maggot’s fodder to exist without a strife.

He the quoted to me that though I may live with my soul, my existence now is all damp.

He said, for such a price, all pleasures of the flesh and nature would be mine in a clamp.

Lured by temptation and desire was when with anxiety I asked how and where do I sign.

He showed me a thick paper stating this is the document, the contract with the dotted line.

In haste I frisked myself for a quill and scraped my finger when out came my own blood.

A drop trickled down and splashed on the dotted line wherein I felt in me a jarring thud.

The dealmaker smiled at me and shook hands saying the deal is done and I am lucky.

For my status now is of a golden eagle in the blue skies than a bathtub’s rubber ducky.

My joy knew no bounds for in me came a sense of ecstasy and a craving for wealth.

In the pleasures of the flesh and nature I imbibed myself and enjoyed at all full health.

I embraced the loveliest of the world’s maidens and engorged myself in all appetites.

Yet my lust and greed, I could never satiate for I needed more than mere mortal sprites.

Twas when the desire for power and position welled within me like rivers that inundate.

Then with the Devil’s blessing and eternal luck, I was a monarch with power of all fate.

With hedonism unsatisfied and hunger rendered yet insatiable, I pillaged all of their lives.

For I harbored the notion that I was God, Himself and ravished other’s spoils and wives.

Twas that time, I tripped on a stone and fell on the ground of mire, stones, and mud.

The fall was unearthly for it had been my descent from grace to poverty with a vast thud.

Later in life what I pillaged and conquered was all taken and I was thrown in a dungeon.

Years passed and I was bent and lithe with skin and stench akin to a decaying sturgeon.

I pondered how could this happen to me when I had the strength in me to strike and fell.

Twas when the Devil appeared saying my time is over, slew me all, dragging me to hell.

He looked at me with that very grimace saying that he has my soul and I bided my time.

He laughed saying I forsook God and had damned myself now with no remorse to rhyme.

I now realized my folly I condemned myself of the gift of God with my treasonous act.

Yet what does it yield to lament now for my treachery damned me by this Faustian pact.