The Knight's Darkness

THE KNIGHT'S DARKNESS

The eyes of Lady Light, they ran me through,
they pierced my heart and tore my world in two.
I couldn't shake the vein they'd put me in.
Their sadness seemed to come from where I’d been,
a sadness so ingrained and deep within,
it surely must have come from primal sin.
Or maybe just to know life is cruel,
and all are spawned from out its bloody pool;
the pain on which our eminence is built,
when seen and understood confers such guilt.
Or had I simply wearied of defence?
And dropped my guard and let her eyes commence
their swift assault upon my naked heart -
defeated by their kindness from the start?

I never meant to stumble on the trail,
to fall in love and crumble, lost and frail.
I long had been enmeshed in misery
by Lady Dark's hot flesh and witchery.
That prison chain we forge in lust, I grant;
a knight will try to flee but often can't.
I somehow thought I’d tossed those throbbing coils
that writhe within the body's hottest oils.
I never would have taken up the quest
if I’d known I’d failed the dragon's test.
It somehow seemed that waking from that spell
had weakened what the flesh can most compel.
But what I took to be a virtue gained
was lusting plucked - while root and all remained.

I measured up my soul as true and strong;
but fate is swift to prove a vain knight wrong.
I lingered by a stream to rest a wink
and let my steed partake of grass and drink.
The calls of ancient souls and restless dead -
they beckoned from the forest up ahead.
That haunted realm within stood square between
the vision of the Grail that I had seen.
Within the vaulted corridors of shades,
amends for every wickedness were made.
I gazed upon that inky cloak of trees
with dread that pooled like bog mud 'round my knees.
I gird my heart in valour's deeper drums
and set my thoughts to face whatever comes.

I mounted up and rode my steed within
those dark and tangled woods of ancient sin.
I left behind the solace of a world
where daylights courage fills the soul unfurled.
A breathless shroud of quiet wrapped around
and choked the fluted notes of living sound.
The slouching trunks, the gnarled brooding boughs,
and all the verdant sprouts that life allows,
seemed hunkered down and pressed in muted grades
and stifled in a mix of stagnant shades.
The murky gloom of trespass unabsolved,
of anger sprung from wounds left unresolved,
were wove in coiling trails of yellowed mist
amid the shadows depth in tomb-like tryst.

The place was strewn with paths that twisted round,
that only served to vex and then confound.
By day the sun was lost within a haze,
and fleeting gleams were split in mad arrays.
By night a host of spectral demons rose
and danced around my fear in shameless throes.
The rhythms of the hours were whisked away
as garbled sheaths of shade obscured the day,
and soon I no more knew the marks of time,
nor reckoning of sun's descent or climb.
And by that loss, the same I lost the line
that guides a pilgrim’s foot with straight design.
I no more knew from whence I had begun,
from that which marks the spot when journeys done.

I wandered for a time I cannot ken,
except to find the trees I marked again.
My noble beast gave out on me and died,
and for the loss of company I cried.
His valiant heart I’m sure was wrung of blood,
for thorns had ripped his legs beneath the mud.
I cut a shock of mane for love and luck,
but lost it in a mire of bugs and muck.
The shreds of hope I held were withered down,
like flakes of gold that flutter from a crown.
On foot I soon was robbed of all my strength
and bleak despair o'ertook my soul at length.
I gave myself to death's unending sleep,
too hopeless and too parched to pray or weep.

But fortune has its own unswerving plan
that moves unseen despite the will of man.
I woke in what I took to be my grave,
a dimly lit and musty earthen cave.
I raised my head and found myself unclothed
beneath a hide whose stench my nostrils loathed.
A meagre fire was set beneath a pot,
the acrid broth it brewed I knew not what.
But on my tongue its taste was yet acute;
a bitter tea of unknown herb and root.
My armour and my garments were at hand,
but yet I felt too weak to walk or stand.
I clasped my hands upon my chest and prayed
to thank him for the mercy of this aid.

The person of this mercy then appeared.
She filled a cup with broth and slowly neared.
An ancient hag in coarse and tattered rags,
her face a parchment page of weathered crags,
her hair a grey and tangled cowl of age:
She bore the guise of madness born of rage.
And yet her eyes belied a fury's fire
and spoke a peace that gentle saints aspire.
She held the cup and let me sip its cure;
Its harsh and bitter taste was strong and pure.
I drank it all and fell within a sleep,
my broken life entrusted to her keep.
I dreamed a thousand dreams of nameless shames
that weighed me like an anchor into flames.

I seemed to see my yesterdays anew,
as if another’s eyes were threaded through.
Instead of days unfolding deed by deed,
they sorted by the hearts more urgent need;
the many times I caused another pain
were withered buds of time that bloomed in vain.
The needs and pleas for help so oft' refused,
by vanity of privileged rank excused,
became as if a boot upon my chest
that crushed my titled lot beneath the rest.
The plaintive cries of countless, faceless poor
that went unheard beyond my bolted door,
now clamoured in my gut with hunger's nails
and hammered on my heart with raging wails.

The maidens that I loved and then forsook,
their caring ways that I so lightly took,
had left behind an unrequited void,
a promise of the heart that youth destroyed.
I saw within the love that two can share -
that boundless possibilities were there;
the vagaries of life, as they grow old,
beseeches lovers' hearts to love remould.
The bond that life has tempered with its fires
can then outlast the world that death expires
and reunite upon a distant shore
two loving hearts that met so long before.
In this I saw the workings of His plan:
to teach the power of love to foolish man.

I woke and slept in fitful spells for days,
or so it seemed without the solar rays.
I always found the crone was crouching near,
but every time her aspect grew more queer.
It may have been the dimness of the light,
or merely my affliction clouding sight:
the haggard face my eyes beheld grew strange
for oft', I swear its countenance would change.
At times it seemed to slip between the years
as child to youth then womanhood appears.
At other times it lost familiar trace,
appearing then to be another’s face.
But even then that stranger's face conveyed
the subtle root from which they all were made.

She only spoke once in all that while,
and this was said, with neither frown nor smile:
     I knew a knight like you, so long ago,
     and like yourself, among the very best,
     he felt the ancient pull to learn and know
     the puzzle of the Cup and of the Quest.
     But he grew weak and died within this cave
     and never understood what's here concealed:
     that all we need the Lord already gave -
     the human heart 'becomes' the Cup revealed.
     If such a cup were yours to have and hold,
     its sacred drink would change the way you live.
     Use well the fleeting hours as they unfold;
     the cup within is filled with what you give.

If I had heard those words before that day,
I would have laughed and smugly turned away,
for those who seek the Light the Grail commands
expect to hold a cup within their hands.
But this I saw was vanity of earth:
that only what the senses touch has worth.
The Quest was more a journey of the soul,
the map of any heart becoming whole,
a human search that forges strong from frail
to form the Cup of Love - the sacred Grail.
I saw how long and hard the path would be,
the shadowed woods that lurked inside of me:
the perils of my nature that I’d kept.
In shame, I closed my eyes and deeply wept.

I slowly found the strength to stand
and journey through that dark and troubled land,
beneath the brooding boughs and sullen shades,
around the bogs and thorny barricades.
My footsteps felt more guided than before,
more steady on the tangled forest floor.
The demons of the night I paid no heed.
I let them wildly rise and then recede;
they didn't linger long to raise their din,
they seemed to fear the quiet flame within.
At last I found the place where I’d begun,
and once again I found the golden sun.
I said a prayer, then slowly gazing up -
beheld within its orb a flowing Cup!