Broken Blade

December 16, 2006 to February 9, 2007



Through broken teeth, skirled winds laughed.
Out of the darkness of the night,
From the cracks of doom, there sallied forth,
A horde of heathen hallows,
Spirits shrieking of dust and despair

They swept over crags and jagged rocks,
Their laughter and their raucous cries
Brought no balm the hearts of warriors weary
Who did hold solemnity beneath a sky of stars

Flames flickered and wavered,
Fires gasped and guttered
But died, they did not.
Lay the flames in hands unwarmed,
Bring to mend could tallow torches not
Broken hearts and cindered souls

Some in silence of the soul did seek
Damsel’s salvation, though cold
She lay and lied, dead and damned
Others shuddered and shivered,
Sobbing out their spirit’s woe,
Ash was in their eyes,
And wore they,
A veil of dust
Torn, their robes---
Wailed they their grief
To heavens unhearing and unweeping.
Bleak and empty was the sky.
Strangers to sorrows grievous
But friends in blood and friends of war,
Their fists they clenched and trembled they.
Like a sudden spring in a desert bleak,
So were their tears on hardened
Faces and on hardened hearts,
Such tears from hearts smote a-smithers
Smote from within and without
By such suddenness, by such silent thunder,
Smote by a spring of sorrows
And by a well of woes.
No more could they smite a foe
No more, but for the heart
From which does well
A thousand sorrows.

But beside the bier
Of brambles and of birch,
Soaked in myrrh and much oil
The bier of shattered stones
And shivered souls,
The bier of brambles and of birch
That drank the blood of olives
And the blood of a princess fallen.

There stood a knight
In plates of armor, rent, askew,
Withered and bloodied---
Dead hung the right arm
In the left was a lance
Twisted, torn asunder
A foot from his feet there lay,
A towering shield of iron wrought,
Cleft betwain and of shards, there were many

Upon the lance leant he,
Hobbled to the head of the bier
The silence of the stars he shattered

Fell the lance from nerveless hand,
Twitching from the venom
Of a foul, abyssal drake
But nearby slain

Fell the lance from nerveless hand,
Twitching from the venom
Of fell heartache
But newly born

With thunderous clang of joints
Of rent steel and broken bone
Fell he to his knees

With ragged rasp, tore he off the jagged clasp
Hurled away his helm, that boar-fender

From deep within his heart,
From the depths of his throat
There issued forth a primal yell
Of grief,
Of joy
And love breaved

He caressed the corse
Brushed back stray locks,
Chided curls blood-matted
With gentle hand
In love unfeeling,
Affection blind and numb
Bent he down and shook the shoulders
Blest the bosom
Kissed he the lips
No more did shine
The alabaster teeth,
But stained with scarlet,
Pained for sin