04-17-2017, 08:41 AM
Rebirth
Churchill, who should know, declared
there’s nothing more exhilarating
than to be shot at without result.
Perhaps; that may explain mad duelists.
But what of times when knighthood flowered
and men had opportunities to face
a visible, ground-drumming charge
of knights in armor?
Death expands to fill the world
(and so the Tarot shows him as a knight)
monstrous centaurs, armored beasts
bodkin-pointed lances lowered
irresistible.
And yet to stand, draw bow and loose
while facing that, or crouch unmoving with
foot on a pike’s butt, trusting those
around to stand as Death’s wave crests above.
But it dissolves, destroyed by arrows
tripped by caltrops, stakes and trenches
or impaled on fellow footmen’s pikes.
See knights, invincible, pile high and die
before mere yeoman fellowship
felt as a common death accepted
reborn, breathing like a kind of king.
Churchill, who should know, declared
there’s nothing more exhilarating
than to be shot at without result.
Perhaps; that may explain mad duelists.
But what of times when knighthood flowered
and men had opportunities to face
a visible, ground-drumming charge
of knights in armor?
Death expands to fill the world
(and so the Tarot shows him as a knight)
monstrous centaurs, armored beasts
bodkin-pointed lances lowered
irresistible.
And yet to stand, draw bow and loose
while facing that, or crouch unmoving with
foot on a pike’s butt, trusting those
around to stand as Death’s wave crests above.
But it dissolves, destroyed by arrows
tripped by caltrops, stakes and trenches
or impaled on fellow footmen’s pikes.
See knights, invincible, pile high and die
before mere yeoman fellowship
felt as a common death accepted
reborn, breathing like a kind of king.
Non-practicing atheist