Lancelot, Seeking Perfection, Encounters Guinevere.
(Parts 1-8)
A man convicted of high treason was hung, drawn and quartered. For the same crime, a Woman was burnt.
1)
The brutal years build muscle on his arms
but leave his head and heart exposed.
Refine the character, exceed ideals, become
the definition of his age; the man
all men are measured by, the man most women
dream they lie beside. Conscripted as the hero
for an epic tale which runs ahead
drawing the path he has to follow,
what could he ask his world would not allow?
Time happened somewhere else.
Hung in her room, where tapestries
depict dead saints and lovers,
green eyes stab up and in.
Nothing that he’s ever learnt
deflects their judgment
when he has retired
to his familiar quarters,
mocking the years of discipline.
What he thought self-denial
was an absence of desire.
He’s never wanted anything
except this expertise in death
his peer’s respect, the crowd’s acclaim
and now her voice creating shadows in his life
whispering his name.
2)
The altar candles prove
more is hidden than they can reveal.
His knees on stone, head bowed
the darkness and the ache familiar
as the words he’s lost.
A virgin cannot understand
and who is being crucified?
What God of Love denies the act?
He sees their bodies writhing in the Pit.
He sees their bodies writhing in her bed.
Convicted of a guilt he won’t accept,
death certain either way,
he gains a vantage point
from which he can survey
walls he cannot leap,
a moat too foul to swim,
but if he’ll crawl along the razor’s edge
the bridge of swords
might let him in.
3)
They’ll stuff his genitals into his mouth
choking the sight of his intestines
smoking on the coals.
She reaches underneath his skin
draws out his heart, begins to feed.
He licks the blood that’s coursing down her chin
the drips between her breasts
the splashes on her belly, on her thighs.
Mouth locked on mouth as though words
had no place or purpose here
they fall together. Driven
by his desperation
he tries to climb inside, curl up
beneath the refuge of her ribs
deny whatever still divides.
4)
She watches from her window,
sees the carters stack the wood
they’d use to burn a guilty queen.
The crowd shoals as the victim’s
dragged towards the stake.
This room. This bed.
Behind her she can hear the roaring
flames, of hell or execution makes no odds,
blistering the skin her lover sang about.
Cries of pleasure modulate to cries of pain.
Aren’t torturer and lover both the same?
Both shred the public face, unleash
the sweating beast no song can gloss.
Withdrawn behind her gowns
she is the queen again,
to make him be some faithful champion,
not the man whose busy hands and tongue
brought so much joy.
5)
The narrative imperative,
illogic of the grail,
which only Galahad escapes:
no matter how elaborate the fuck;
negotiate an aftermath!
Not the familiar strangeness
reentering the everyday
as clothes hung on the floor
hide cooling flesh,
the blinds are drawn
masks are adjusted,
civilities observed,
nor the furtive exit,
from her quarters
lies succeeding lies
facing friends
he has betrayed,
and learning how
to look them in the eyes.
But this essential singularity:
two bodies leave the room
treading their separate paths.
6)
To purge the sin that settles like
the stench of bodies burning in the square
he dedicates himself to harsher quests,
to the purity the grail is offering.
He rides on, famished, cold
beyond the mark where other heroes fail.
What good’s the world’s applause
for what he knows is fraud?
She is the landscape
he would wander through
but to what end, except
participation in the mystery
of repetitious suicide
the frantic fumbling
frenzied flesh to flesh
discovering, as each one falls,
more walls, more ditches,
more locked doors.
The mountains, chapels, grottos
victories; the casual deaths,
the endless miracles all pale.
Not wanting to succeed,
how can he fail?
7)
He returns, to claim his prize
to learn, too late,
unlike a castle, gates slammed shut
she can be had, but can’t be held.
The treachery of metaphors:
a sleazy go-between
reality and understanding,
having drawn them to the bed,
stoked the flames and hung them
on a fantasy of comprehension
denies responsibility and runs
to sell them for a quarter.
8)
Free of impediments,
she turns aside
from futures
they had whispered.
Call it remorse,
guilt, Christian
upbringing
A lesser man
would call it
a betrayal.
He waves goodbye
and wishes
one last kiss,
which she denies.
Alone, of course, his knees on stone,
head bowed, the ache familiar
as the worlds he’s lost.
The candle flames illuminate
smirking icons who deride
the sterile echoes of his prayers
scratching at the gate of Heaven
pleading for a second chance.
Stripped to the clarity of remorse
what’s left but dying, devotion
and perfecting his repentance?
