Tom Riddle's Secret

There once lived a boy

who could never enjoy

The virtue of the light.

So he bullied and stole

And played different roles

Past curfew of the night.

Orphaned, he lived,

And often he fibbed

To teachers, doctors, snakes.

And though a wizard saw through

The lies the boy grew

The old man knew not the stakes.

So he sent him to school,

The boy tutored to rule

The power in his veins.

Yet slyly he learned

To impress and to earn

Glory and fortune and fame.

But such was his mind

To claim divine line

That he took up Slytherin’s end:

To open the chamber

Of common man’s danger

Of Slytherin’s slithering friend.

Yet his fear sunk too deep

And it tortured his sleep

The Last Enemy sat full intact.

So he found a professor,

A soul-splitting confessor,

And thus he did battle on that.

When the act was done

Immortality won,

He did it again and again.

And again and again

And again and again

Till seven left nothing within.

  

Revealed to the world,

His strength unfurled,

The boundaries of magic pushed

Further than ever

No other endeavor

Was ever great as this curse.

With henchmen trained

And the Frenchman name

For “flight-of-death” in short

Tom Riddle became

The unnamable name

The Dark Lord, “Vol-de-mort.”

But now lived a babe

A prophecy made

That threatened to threaten his throne.

So he hunted him down

In an infamous town

And killed till the babe was alone.

All his anger strong

Ollivander’s wand

Flashed green to mark his equal.

But the flaw in the plan

Of the love of woman

Passed years to hark his sequel.

Pain beyond pain

Voldemort’s bane,

Wandering, bodiless woe.

Deeper than dark

Was the terrible arc

Before being a bodily foe.

Yet he rebuilt his throng

With vision stretched long

Crumbling old world order,

And marched on the boy

Who had dared to destroy

His secret cold soul-holders.

And thus came the duel

That ended the rule

Where Voldemort met his end,

In a fractional, magical,

Fictional, factual,

Radical, actual bend.

And as horrid as he was

Think for a moment of us

And wonder, "What is the same?"

Haven’t we stolen,

Lied, and broken,

For glory or fortune or fame?

Have you never had fear

Of the end that draws near

Of the Last Enemy, Death?

So what made the boy

To never enjoy

His life and breath and flesh?

But the old man said,

(I hear his voice in my head)

A note against self-induced poisons:

“I once knew a boy

(Who could never rejoice)

Who made all the wrong choices.”