(no subject)
"The Love of Knight and King"
© Marie S. Crosswell 2009
Arthur, to his Lancelot:
Some men are haunted by dreams, by those they have lost and those they yearn after-
but in my waking hours, it is your pair of gray eyes,
like a mirror set toward the storm in my breast,
that touches what tender part of me survives, watching me through every battlefield.
Those eyes, my living ghost, faithful down to the movement of my muscles.
You fight for me, my knight, but what does the king and captain fight for?
To reach you again, to lay my hands on your flesh in pursuit of fire;
it is this need propelling Excalibur, not hatred but love,
a blind need to close the gap between us: that gap like an island separating sea from sea.
In the agony of your absence, what am I but a crownless king?
A cloak without shoulders to shroud.
I have taken you to my heart like a scar: permanent and beautiful,
wrought out of blood and pain and the opening of me.
Into my grave, I will take your mark; on my deathbed, as I go into that gentle light,
I will remember the smell of your hair, your fierce heart burning for my sake,
the weight and warmth of your embrace, our wholeness stretched over years.
My champion, my Lancelot-emblazoned on my soul, red banner I carry into surrender.
The knight reigns over his king forevermore.
Lancelot, to his Arthur:
In the green hills, in the valleys of our land, I have spilled testimony of my love
for you: the one true king. Silent months, years, miles between us could not break
your crown around my heart. It was not the flesh of women, nor love for a lady,
that breathed purpose into my being. Not that fickle feeling or pleasure which inspired
me to greatness and its suffering. Only my passion for you, who held me close like a treasure made for your cherishing.
I have only desired to die in your hands, the tenderness in your fingertips
a last sensation at the edges of my life. Men, I have killed-for the shine in your face,
my heart swollen at the sound of strangers naming me your champion, and Death
I have courted all my days to prevent her unclean hand from touching what is mine
to touch. It is your caress I carry, through the green hills, a knight’s token warmer
and warmer with longing the farther I am from you. To your white-horsed majesty,
I kneel, forever bound to love, forever your beloved.
Into your eyes, I come home and lay war to rest for peace
and to know nothing except this terrain of you and me.
My spirit wandering these valleys to the sea and back again
bears your name, Arthur, like your holy kiss against my brow
and the touch of Excalibur on each shoulder.
© Marie S. Crosswell 2009
Arthur, to his Lancelot:
Some men are haunted by dreams, by those they have lost and those they yearn after-
but in my waking hours, it is your pair of gray eyes,
like a mirror set toward the storm in my breast,
that touches what tender part of me survives, watching me through every battlefield.
Those eyes, my living ghost, faithful down to the movement of my muscles.
You fight for me, my knight, but what does the king and captain fight for?
To reach you again, to lay my hands on your flesh in pursuit of fire;
it is this need propelling Excalibur, not hatred but love,
a blind need to close the gap between us: that gap like an island separating sea from sea.
In the agony of your absence, what am I but a crownless king?
A cloak without shoulders to shroud.
I have taken you to my heart like a scar: permanent and beautiful,
wrought out of blood and pain and the opening of me.
Into my grave, I will take your mark; on my deathbed, as I go into that gentle light,
I will remember the smell of your hair, your fierce heart burning for my sake,
the weight and warmth of your embrace, our wholeness stretched over years.
My champion, my Lancelot-emblazoned on my soul, red banner I carry into surrender.
The knight reigns over his king forevermore.
Lancelot, to his Arthur:
In the green hills, in the valleys of our land, I have spilled testimony of my love
for you: the one true king. Silent months, years, miles between us could not break
your crown around my heart. It was not the flesh of women, nor love for a lady,
that breathed purpose into my being. Not that fickle feeling or pleasure which inspired
me to greatness and its suffering. Only my passion for you, who held me close like a treasure made for your cherishing.
I have only desired to die in your hands, the tenderness in your fingertips
a last sensation at the edges of my life. Men, I have killed-for the shine in your face,
my heart swollen at the sound of strangers naming me your champion, and Death
I have courted all my days to prevent her unclean hand from touching what is mine
to touch. It is your caress I carry, through the green hills, a knight’s token warmer
and warmer with longing the farther I am from you. To your white-horsed majesty,
I kneel, forever bound to love, forever your beloved.
Into your eyes, I come home and lay war to rest for peace
and to know nothing except this terrain of you and me.
My spirit wandering these valleys to the sea and back again
bears your name, Arthur, like your holy kiss against my brow
and the touch of Excalibur on each shoulder.