He walked in silence
long before the crowds knew his name.
Not as a priest,
nor as a pope,
but as a man
listening to the breath of the mountains
and the ache of history.

Words did not come to him
as weapons
but as prayer-
not to be spoken loudly
but carried like water
over stone.

He wrote with hands
that had held tools,
eyes that had seen war,
a heart tempered by solitude
and the slow shaping of faith.

His poems did not ask to be praised.
They asked to be heard
by the soul
that still wonders
if love and suffering
are not the same road.

He knew the weight of time,
but still he wrote
as if each line
could redeem a moment,
and that was enough.