09-30-2016, 06:11 AM
Anno Domini 1076
Guiscard de Hauteville inclined
his pointed helmet to observe
the progress of his armored troop
upon the Adriatic Sea.
Their wooden galleys probed among
Venetian and Byzantine ships
chained in a ring, with platforms built
above them stocked with heavy stones.
If only his French knights could get
among these wretched southerners
their Norman blood and broadswords would
make short and grisly work of them!
For who could doubt the bravery
of men who fought on heaving seas
in chain-mail that would drown them quick
as candle-snuff (not one could swim)?
But stones fell on his galleys’ decks
and splintered through them one by one
their fellows rescued some but then
withdrew - no fools were Norman men.
Guiscard shrugged hauberk-heavily
to see his knights defeated by
Venetians hired by Byzantines
unworthy of their Norman steel.
And then he plotted, for the age
was scarcely past Millennium
which left nine centuries and more
to die before the Savior came.
He’d triumph (Guiscard always did)
with honeyed words or stratagem
and then return to Sicily
Taranto and Apulia.
Guiscard de Hauteville inclined
his pointed helmet to observe
the progress of his armored troop
upon the Adriatic Sea.
Their wooden galleys probed among
Venetian and Byzantine ships
chained in a ring, with platforms built
above them stocked with heavy stones.
If only his French knights could get
among these wretched southerners
their Norman blood and broadswords would
make short and grisly work of them!
For who could doubt the bravery
of men who fought on heaving seas
in chain-mail that would drown them quick
as candle-snuff (not one could swim)?
But stones fell on his galleys’ decks
and splintered through them one by one
their fellows rescued some but then
withdrew - no fools were Norman men.
Guiscard shrugged hauberk-heavily
to see his knights defeated by
Venetians hired by Byzantines
unworthy of their Norman steel.
And then he plotted, for the age
was scarcely past Millennium
which left nine centuries and more
to die before the Savior came.
He’d triumph (Guiscard always did)
with honeyed words or stratagem
and then return to Sicily
Taranto and Apulia.
Non-practicing atheist