Experience Tumblr like never before
Wolves in the roadways, brothers at war,
The sword a tool to be bought and sold,
Savages raiding the eastern shore
And the King old, old.
"Newest of all my knights, now ride,
Quarter my kingdom, search moor and fell.
Find me the mage who stood at my side
When the world was well."
A crazed knight dodders across the hills
Blear-eyed, mumbling and listening at stones.
His armour is rusted away. He feels
Ice in his bones.
The last King lies in a secret grave.
His Caer is sacked and his kingdom gone
Under the savages' conquering wave.
But the search goes on.
Where? Which outcrop on what blank moor?
They swore there was something that could not die.
It might sleep, but would wake when needed . . . Or
Is it all a lie?
On a cliff which the ravens swoop beneath
(He does not see them, but hears their calls)
He lies exhausted and waits for death.
Mild sunlight falls
On limbs and turf . . . There is something there,
Not heard like the calling birds, but felt . . .
A presence filling the tingling air,
Seeming to melt
Times into Time . . . In this Time, this Place
A boy lies watching the ravens' flight,
Not outside, but filling the self-same space
As the dying knight . . .
And others whose times are still to be
Here in this instant, layer within layer,
Mind within mind, like the rings of a tree
Grown fresh each year
Till it holds the centuries, age within age . . .
The last knight dies in the evening dew
Knowing the tale of the sleeping mage
Was a lie, but true.
Nowhere, ever, for him to find
Under any boulder on moor or hill
But buried in minds fresh born that mind
Dreams on, dreams still.