THE FOUR BARDS

PART I

The streetlights of Morross Street in Dearborn, Michigan, cast a sickly yellow glow on the wet pavement. It was a late Friday night, the silence was broken only by the distant hum of a passing car. The old house creaked like a ship navigating a storm, each groan echoing Wintry’s weary sighs. He was hunched over his notebook, a half-empty mug of coffee beside him, when the room temperature dropped noticeably. A shiver ran down his spine, and the hair on his arms stood on end. Wintry looked up, expecting to see the draft from a poorly sealed window, but what he saw instead made his heart leap into his throat. The air thickened, the scent of old books and dust intensified, and a curious hum filled the room, not quite sound, but a vibration that resonated in his bones. Standing in a semi-circle around his tiny living room were four figures, shimmering like half-formed ghosts.

Wintry knew them instantly. He had worshipped their words since he was a boy. Had seen portraits of what history painted them to appear like. Rumi, the Persian mystic; Sappho, the poet of Lesbos; Edgar Allan Poe, the master of macabre; and William Shakespeare, the Bard himself. But what was more perplexing was, they were here, in his house in Dearborn, Michigan.

Rumi, a whirlwind of flowing robes and ecstatic pronouncements, materialized first, his eyes wide with a bewildered joy. “The light! It is everywhere!” he exclaimed, gesturing vaguely at the flickering fluorescent tubes overhead. He was also fascinated by a flashlight, whirling it around and murmuring about the infinite manifestations of divine light. He looked less the venerated Persian mystic and more like a guy who’d just stepped off a particularly bumpy flight.

Close behind him shimmered Sappho, her dark, almond-shaped eyes scanning the room with a keen, almost predatory interest. She found a Playboy magazine and began flipping through it. She smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle in her chiton and murmured,

“Such an eclectic collection. And so many women. I can almost smell…potential.” Sappho, leaning closer to Wintry, found herself strangely captivated by the magazine. “Fascinating,” she murmured to Wintry. “These creatures? Are they available for further study?”

Poe, on the other hand, looked like he was witnessing the end of times. His raven shrieked in alarm and attempted to take refuge in his hair. “This moving box of images, it is a portal to madness!” he declared, dramatically clutching his chest. “The horror, the utter, unspeakable horror!” He pointed a trembling finger at a show playing on television, and shrieked, “Nevermore shall I understand this infernal contraption.” Then, his attention was drawn to a collection of Stephen King novels, his face a mask of morbid curiosity.

Shakespeare, ever the wordsmith, appeared, his brow furrowed with perplexity. “Hark! What cacophony assaults mine ears?” He thundered, his voice echoing strangely in the cramped space. He was, to put it mildly, not impressed with the loud rock music emanating from a hidden speaker. He attempted to make sense of the situation. “By the beard of Zeus! What manner of sorcery is this? Moving pictures on a handheld device! Is this entertainment, or the work of Satan?” He began having a full-blown existential crisis, pacing in front of a shelf of old vinyl records, arguing that they were surely the work of devils.

The four poets, now fully materialized and staring around Wintry’s house like bewildered toddlers in a toy store, were indeed quite the sight. After recovering from his initial shock, Wintry decided the best course of action would be to offer them tea and sit down and figure out what was going on. He brewed up a pot of Earl Grey while the poets continued to look around.

Rumi approached a laptop, its screen displaying a garish array of colorful images and moving video clips. He peered at the screen, his spiritual gaze attempting to make sense of the flickering pictures. A video of a cat chasing a laser pointer blinked before him. He tilted his head, perplexed.

“By the light of Allah,” Rumi murmured, his voice a soft, ethereal tremor, “what manner of place is this? The air sings not of divine love, but of strange flickerings.” He gestured vaguely at the YouTube page.

Poe, ever the connoisseur of the strange, was captivated by Twitter. He watched a video about cryptids, the low-resolution images of supposed monsters both intriguing and disturbing. “Ah, the grotesque,” he murmured, his voice a delighted rasp. “A modern pantheon of horrors, presented in this digital medium. The Raven himself would be pleased.” He then stumbled upon a video of someone reading “The Raven” with a melodramatic voice and amateur costume, and recoiled. “Oh no! What tragedy hath been wrought upon my humble work.”

Shakespeare, the master storyteller, was confronted with Facebook. He scrolled through the infinite stream of selfies, status updates, and political rants, his face a mask of incredulity.

“A stage for all the world, yet filled with such shallow pronouncements. Where is the depth? The poetry? The soaring language that stirs the soul?”

He read a post about someone’s breakfast, then a heated debate about pizza toppings, and nearly wept for the lost art of dramatic dialogue.

Sappho, ever the sensualist, was immediately drawn to the images of women, though these women were different, adorned in strange clothes, with their hair captured in odd, unnatural colors. She reached out a translucent hand, her fingers passing harmlessly through the screen. “These women– they are not goddesses, but they are enticing. Yet, they are also separated, contained by this box?” She furrowed her brow, struggling to comprehend the nature of the device.

After tea and cookies, He would introduce the poets to more chaos of the 21st century. First on the agenda was a simple demonstration on his phone. He pulled up YouTube, typed in “Cats playing the piano,” and showed them the results.

Next, he attempted to explain Facebook. He showed them profiles, explaining the concept of “friends” and “posts.” Rumi found the idea of connecting with others across vast distances deeply profound, declaring it a testament to the interconnectedness of all things.

Sappho was immediately taken by the sheer volume of potential matches. She declared the platform “a veritable orchard of delectable fruits!” She was determined to figure out all she could about the women who had graced his profile.

Poe, however, remained unconvinced. He called it “a digital mirror reflecting the vapid souls of modern man.” He found the endless stream of selfies and mundane updates to be deeply unsettling. “Where is the leather bindings?” he cried, “Where is the candlelight? Where are the gatherings? Has this society forgotten there is a moon outside to be admired? Endless paths to roam? Have they completely abandoned common sense to gaze at a screen all day?”

Shakespeare, completely bewildered, threw his hands up in the air. “Hark! This network is a tangled web! A jumble of words and pictures, signifying nothing! ‘Tis truly absurd and irrational!” He declared it a pale imitation of human interaction.

The Poets finally sat down to catch their breath from all that they saw. They all motioned to Wintry to join them, and they would finally reveal what they had come here for.

PART II

Wintry, stunned into silence by this otherworldly assembly, could only stare. Rumi smiled, his eyes filled with an empathetic understanding.

“Fear not, child. We have not come to haunt you, but to listen. The follies of these times have echoed in the ether, and we, who have felt the same pangs of human idiocy, have been drawn here. Oh, seeker of words, we have returned for council.”

His aura seemed to glow a little brighter as he spoke, as if trying to impart some measure of his divine light upon Wintry.

“Council?” Wintry managed, his voice a raspy whisper.

“Yes, boy,” Sappho interrupted, her voice a low, husky growl laced with impatience. “And we have a matter of grave importance to discuss.” Her eyes scanned Wintry with a barely concealed annoyance.

Poe, with a theatrical sigh that seemed to shake the very air around him, stepped forward. “A most melancholy matter, young poet. A descent into the catacombs of oblivion, where our verses gather dust—and our names are but whispers on the barren winds.”

Shakespeare, with a flourish of his spectral hand, added, “Indeed, a tale of woe, a tragedy unfolding on the stage of time. Forsooth, our words, once beacons of brilliance, now lie like buried treasure, forgotten by the world’s heedless gaze.”

Wintry, still dumbfounded, could only stammer, “But that’s not true! You are legends! Generations have read your works!”

Rumi’s smile faded slightly. “Ah, young one, legends are but shadows without their light. The light of shared reading, and the light of remembered experience, is what keeps a legend alive.”

“And that light,” Sappho added with a snarl, “has been extinguished. I sought to capture the sacred fires of passion between women, and now the only fires they seek are the flickering images on their infernal screens!” Her spectral form flickered with a brief, incandescent rage.

Poe, his eyes darkening further, pointed a long, skeletal finger at Wintry. “The youth of this age read profiles, look at nude pictures, watch silly videos, and play endless video games. But the knowledge that we chronicled, the true depths of intelligence, they are no longer found, and they do not seek them.”

Shakespeare clapped his hands in mock enthusiasm, the sound sharp and brittle. “’ Alas, poor Yorick!’ they do not know, young poet! ‘To be or not to be’ has become the question of ‘what to watch.’ The theaters are empty, the quill is set down, and the stage is dark! They confined themselves to cat and dog videos and silly survival games! They bicker and strain their eyes on screens. To what purpose?”

Wintry, finding his voice, finally found the courage to ask, “But why me? I’m just a poet in Dearborn! No one even reads my stuff. No one even knows I write, or exist, for that matter!”

“Precisely!” Poe exclaimed, a flicker of something almost like glee in his eyes. “They have completely abandoned the written and take selfies instead! You are a living poet, a contemporary. You are our link to this baffling electric world. You must tell us why our words have been cast aside, left like withered leaves on the autumn ground.”

“You have the power!” Shouted Rumi, “You have shown us this technology and can share our story with the world in an instant. Why have they abandoned us for the obscurity of a digital screen? Children don’t play outside anymore! Books no longer grace libraries, only this digital filth. Parents are neglectful, and society has lost all reason.”

Shakespeare, his face etched with hope, stepped closer. “Wintry, thou art hesitating. Why? Thou must tell them! Thou must show them that we exist, that we are not forgotten.”

Rumi placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “Patience, friend. The path to understanding is often fraught with thorns.”

Poe shook his head, his voice a low, mournful rumble. “The world has grown vapid, its soul consumed by trivialities. There is no room for darkness, no space for the abyss, even when it stares them in the face.”

“Then what do we do?” Sappho asked, her voice laced with a desperate urgency, almost akin to begging. “What is the path back to the light?”

Wintry, feeling a surge of empathy for these spectral poets, spoke up, “I think it’s not that people don’t care anymore. It’s just different now. There’s so much noise, so much vying for attention. Your work requires time, effort, and a willingness to look into the darkness, to see yourself there, too.”

Rumi nodded slowly. “Ah, the labyrinth of the modern soul. So much light, yet so little illumination.”

Wintry thought for a moment, staring at the shimmering forms before him. He felt a strange surge of inspiration, a connection that spanned centuries. “We make them care again,” he said, his voice gaining confidence. “We remind them of the power of words, of the beauty of the human condition, the depth of feeling, both light and dark, which makes us who we are.”

He looked at each of them directly, his eyes meeting their ghostly gazes. “I’ll do my part. But I need your help. We need to remind the world what they’re missing. Maybe, I can write an elegy to the neglected greats; a story of the four ghosts who returned to remind a decaying world of their importance.”

A silence fell over the room, and then Shakespeare smiled, a warm, radiant smile that seemed to fill the small space with light. “Ah, young bard,” he said, “Perhaps the fire is not yet extinguished. Perhaps, with your help, it can once more ignite.”

Rumi, his voice a whisper, added, “We were called back for a reason, but this is not our purpose. The light we seek is not found in this dazzling machine. It resides within the hearts of men, in the stillness of prayer, in the whispered words of love.”

Sappho, her eyes filled with a newfound melancholy, nodded. “The beauty I crave cannot be captured in these images. It is in the touch, the kiss, in the eye contact, the shared glances of kindred spirits.”

Poe agreed, his voice strangely devoid of its usual theatricality. “The true horror lies not in their idiocy, but in the loss of connection, the fading of the human spirit. This digital cage is a tomb of a different sort.”

And Shakespeare, finally finding a spark of his old fire, declaimed with a weary dignity, “We are poets, storytellers, weavers of dreams. We must return to the realm where words hold power, where the stage is not a screen, but the world itself. This ephemeral world has forgotten us.”

Rumi, his voice a beacon of hope, spoke of the importance of love, not just for others, but for oneself. “Our words must be heard again, so the light may enter the wound and heal it,” he said, his words resonating with a profound wisdom that pierced through Wintry’s confusion. “Let the world embrace the sorrow, for it is the fertile ground where new growth may blossom.”

Sappho spoke of the power of female solidarity, of the beauty that exists in all forms of love. “Do not be afraid to express your soul, Wintry,” she urged, her gaze intense. “Your voice is valuable, your experience unique. Let it flow, like the river to the sea.” Her hand reaching out as if to offer comfort, “The veil is thin, Wintry, when the soul is in turmoil. Our words, our passions, our very essences, linger in the fabric of existence. And sometimes, that fabric unravels a little, allowing us to be heard again. So, write with courage, write with honesty, and write with love.”

Poe offered a different kind of comfort, one born from the acceptance of darkness. “Do not shy away from the shadows, Wintry,” he hissed, his eyes burning with a strange intensity. “For within them lies the deepest source of inspiration. Embrace the macabre, the melancholy, the mystery. For in the face of the void, true art is born. Do not be afraid of chaos, it is merely the prelude to creation.”

And Shakespeare, with a wink and a flourish, spoke of the drama of it all, of the ups and downs, the triumphs and the tragedies. “Life, my dear Wintry, is a stage. And you are the player, the writer, the director. Don’t let the fear of failure silence your voice. Embrace the chaos, the comedy, and the tragedy, and let our story unfold.”

“We must go now, Wintry,” Rumi said, his voice soft. “But we shall remain with you. In the echoes of your heart, in the whispers of your mind, in the beat of your pen.”

“Go forth and tell your story, Wintry,” Shakespeare declared, with a bow, “for the world awaits your unique perspective.”

PART III

The hours blurred, punctuated by the bewildered mutterings of the four resurrected poets. Rumi tried to find the divine in the algorithms, but only found confusion. Sappho, initially captivated by the images of women, became disillusioned by the superficiality of the digital world, yearning for the warmth of actual flesh and blood. Poe, initially entertained by the macabre, became increasingly morose at the overwhelming triviality that filled the world, finding true terror in the chaos of it all. And Shakespeare, the Bard himself, was lamenting the death of true art and oratory in this new, chaotic age.

As the first rays of dawn pierced through the grimy windows, the four poets seemed to reach a silent understanding. This world, with its glowing screens and fleeting digital connections, was not their home. It was a place where the grand narratives had been replaced by fleeting distractions, where the light of divinity was hidden behind the pixelated glare of a screen.

And with that, the figures began to fade, their translucent forms dissolving into the dimly lit air of Wintry’s cluttered living room. The temperature slowly rose, and the silence felt less heavy, the feeling more hopeful. Wintry opened his notebook, the familiar dryness of the page no longer a discouragement, but a challenge. He picked up his pen, its weight familiar and comforting. And as he began to write, the words flowed freely, not from an old hurt, but with a newfound sense of peace, acceptance, and purpose. The voices of the four poets were still there, not in his ear, but in the rhythms of his heart, guiding him, encouraging him, helping him to find his voice.

The journey ahead was still uncertain, but Wintry knew now that he was no longer writing alone. He was writing with the echoes of the masters, and most importantly, with the authentic and rediscovered voice within his soul. The four poets were gone. A new storyteller had emerged. Wintry, though still at a loss to explain their presence, found their antics oddly endearing. They were certainly an unusual group, but they brought a certain chaotic energy to his quiet corner of Dearborn. And besides, they had become rather good company. One afternoon, as Wintry was preparing a meal, he found a note on his counter, written in elegant calligraphy.

“To the kind soul of this strange and confusing abode,” it read. “We, the souls of those long-departed, wish to express our gratitude for your hospitality. We have glimpsed the wonders and absurdities of this future you dwell in, and we are forever changed. We shall now depart, with a sense of both bewilderment and amusement. Perhaps, someday, we shall meet again to ponder the mysteries of the internet.

Yours in the infinite flow of time. Poe.”

Below the note, there was a small pile of old books. Shakespeare had left a signed copy of his collected works, Poe left a leather-bound edition of his stories, Sappho a handwritten collection of her poems, and Rumi had gifted Wintry a beautiful old copy of the Masnavi, the pages filled with the light of his love for God. Wintry smiled, a genuine smile, something he hadn’t done for a while, and started browsing through the books they had left. The souls of four poets had come and gone, but they had left a spark behind, a spark of joy, and a whole bundle of questions. And Wintry, the simple poet, wouldn’t trade it for the world. Morross Street, silent once more, seemed to exhale a collective sigh, as if finally free of the strange, haunting presence that had briefly graced its decaying heart. Their departure was not a tragedy, but a quiet retreat from a world that had forgotten the true magic of words and human connection. Their journey into the light was a reminder that the real stories are not written on screens, but within the hearts of those who are willing to listen.

A portal shimmered, spitting four spirits onto a cold, confused world. Gone was the sun-drenched meadow, replaced by a cavernous city aglow with pulsating neon signs and loud vehicles. People moved with a mechanical precision, their eyes glued to small glowing devices they held in their hands. No smiles, no laughter, just the rhythmic tap, tap, tap of fingers on glass. They noticed that some had tiny devices plugged into their ears, further isolating them from the beauty of bird songs and windswept trees. Their journey had led them to a place where light was not absent, but hollow. A world saturated with technology, but devoid of the warmth of human connection. They had fled the darkness, only to find a different kind of void. And Wintry, now, perched on the hill overlooking the lake, the sky was ablaze, a riot of colors that should have been breathtaking. But Wintry glanced at his family members. Each one, a silhouette against the fiery backdrop, was still clutching their phones. Their thumbs danced, faces illuminated by the cold, artificial light of their screens instead of the warm colors of the dying day.

Their fingers might be free from tapping, their bodies finally still, but their minds remained chained to the endless stream of notifications, the endless ping sounds of the digital world. Wintry felt a pang of despair, he knew, as he saw the way their eyes darted around, never meeting his, never truly seeing the magnificent canvas above them. Where, he wondered, could a heart find solace in a world so beautifully, tragically, empty? Even the sunset, a once-sacred spectacle, seemed to fade with the encroaching darkness, its vibrant hues unable to pierce through the walls of their self-imposed solitude.