Bedivere/Horatio

Each living thing is like a kingdom

that rises not quite out of nothing: April stirrings

of some boy and the May beauty

of a generous princess. Then came children—

who could calculate their splendor?

And there were factories in valleys, mile after mile,

dragons of purple smoke, blue flames at night,

castles hidden in forests equally hidden

where a shining company rode through flowers

to pacify the dangerous land. Triangular sails,

violet, saffron, and rose, glowed beyond coves

under cliffs dangling silver torques of waterfall.

Later the parents aged and grew more grateful,

more full of a certainty that could not be glimpsed

or dismayed, and then the children

were gone to some other land

as if to heaven, yet the mourning

was not for death. Now by a quiet wall

buckled cement gives a bright home

to milkweeds like strange skeletons,

pale green, intact and upright, and tall white grasses

that never wave. The sole survivor—

a duty was laid on him

to tell the tale among new minds, other ways,

and how do we imagine him,

wherever he’s gone—all that remains,

scholar of an unread book,

beggar of an unfilled cup,

an unknown variation,

the thought of the kingdom in a lost man?