I guess it's a knight alone in the forest
with a dragon, and no one to see the arc of his lance.
After so many tales of one or two
strands, pressed on like a purple
bruise, can he take pride in the
bundled grass before him, braided by the wind?
Pride in what had had to have strength
to go to his line, but what now seems
indubitably feeble, and anyways only
to discourse on here and there, day to day, next
to the constancy of the leather cuirass
tied onto his barrel chest.
A handhold, a bluebird, fit to the palm,
the footprint of a dog in the road. He sits
in the dusty courtyard, poking at
cicada husks, sucking on caramels. The whole tome
will never be writ, save for a frontispiece
that trails off mid-sentence,
when something like a nascent cloud
puts the knife back in the courtyard,
or what everyone else accomplished
while he was prodding at
dragonfly wings. And that is all
that is ever written, and it is a sort
of battle, or journey, that can end in
judgment, and a great book, and a woman,
at the rock-point, in a blue ring of cloud,
wearing a sash.
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