as morning woke with the gentle turn of land
and shades dark awoke and reached
ignorant roses undressed themselves
for that bastard sun and
stray dogs defecated the night's meal
the knight's head, a turret upon his broad chest
dirty as the roots of roses
gazed upon the king's cattle grazing the morning away
their pelts golden halos in soft morning light
noses glistening in dew like fireflies
cattle were cattle, always the same
always true
as knights were knights, which was
to say men
and men were seldom what they seemed
he was paid to give the king what
the king wanted
to fulfilled the obligation of duty
and coin
to act
to act upon
to be a changer of the hour
a ripple in the lake of the day
true this was
true the act
true as death
as dead as the words
the king heard
as dead as his heart
in the swing of sword
as dead as the boy's father
who died not with honor
nor a single blow
11 comments:
;( I'm kind of a downer today. Your words touched me deeply and made me sink a little. I hope I die with honor and a few battle scars so I will be remembered.
Hello Trée!!! It is with much pleasure that I find yours space after this long absence! I missed all that! They is always also beautiful and marvellous…;)
Lime, just arrived back from a 50 mile ride in 90 degree Louisiana heat. I'm too tired to be down. :-D
Pierre, so delightful to see you again. Hope and trust you are doing well. As always, thanks for the kind words. :-)
Well, I'm pleased to report I've rebounded! That ride had to be humid, I believe. Yuck. I'm sure the Badger will be blogging about his ride up Mt. Charleston today. His words in e-mail to me were along the lines of "the most unpleasant ride I've had in a long time." The wind shrieks, the ride gains 5,000 ft. + of elevation in 17 miles. You get the picture.
Rebounding is good. :-)
Wasn't as humid as it could be in South Louisiana. We road River Rd out from LSU, following the levee along the Mississippi river. First two hours were nice, then it got hot as in 95 degrees plus hot. Ran out of water the last ten miles. My face was covered in dried salt when I finished. Still, a good ride. :-)
I'm told that any ride is a good ride. I only caught "Louisiana" today. I'd thought Tennessee, based on your profile.
Lime, I do live in Tennessee. In Louisiana visiting family and friends. Now a boy can't be without his bike for a week now can he? ;-)
I've traveled to the beach for a short vacation with a man who put more planning into transporting his bike and accessories, cycling gear, plotting rides in unfamiliar territory . . . but that's OK. It's all about the rubber hitting the road for you all. And I'm as single-minded as that about my passion. On some of those beach trips, the car was hardly used. We used our bodies to get around for every purpose.
A moment in time, suspended, this is what this poem seems like, though it is like points plotted on a graph in order to find precise centre in the way that it handles the information being given, at the same time it becomes more directly apparent that this is what the other poems have done also. Like the thousand words in lieu of the picture, reading this poem after having read the others, it gradually compresses all the impressions received into two sets of soulful eyes, history, a life, philosophy, and like the final piece of a puzzle, incomplete prior thereto, only now showing the true picture the final line of the poem, nor a single blow, stunning to the senses, awareness of this single moment, of the (unknown) reason and the (immediate) effect (upon wife, son) incredibly in spite of the intensity of every word that you have written in this series profusely acute.
Amazing doesn't even begin to cover this poem.
(tbc)
Sunshine, what I like about this poem is the idea of messiness, the idea that what he told the king was not true. This poem comes from a vision I had upon waking, quite gruesome, of the final death blow, of how that actually happened, which was not as has been implied, which is to say, not clean, not easy, not with honor did it happen, nor with just a single blow. Keep in mind, whatever did happen, however it happened, the woman and the boy witnessed it, a ringside seat. They know what happened. I can't wait till I figure out what happens next. :-D
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