He had the darkness draped about him
Like the night sky was a mantle,
The lack of light a dressing gown; the dim
Whisper of a candle
Taunting the eye to find it in the window of a woman’s room
As she lay abed, warm and waiting for her groom.
I saw him across a clearing. My fellows were ahead.
I turned my face and saw the form—
The man draped in darkness—the lonely bride abed—
The candlelight upon the bride, her colors warm—
Though Night’s black be rich and enduring as blood,
Where he crouched was as where the Sun stood.
I lagged behind my company
For the sake of staring at the Sun
And tasting, on bile’s tide, the fee:
Revulsion and humility to see undone
The Laws of Nature: the Sun’s repose,
An undressed bride, a cloaked man… and our prince, alone.
Better (to myself I thought)
Were he dead; had our prince fallen
For love of us—if he had fought
What wickedness he was, yet would we hold our prince within,
Bearing his body, our embrace,
That with his forefathers we might let him rest in grace.
Instead, he was stooped before me, thence
Yalms apart; between my beating heart and his
Lay naught but the forest floor—pretense
For neither love nor loathing came from the derelict
Shape of man worn by this beast—
An animal’s inhabitance of man’s conceit.
’Twas of no use nor joy to eat me, the predator declared
With the stillness of his body: he did not advance
Nor hang his head nor grimace so that his teeth were bared
He showed me neither shame nor anger: he but glanced
With his eyes that suited not a lonesome man in snowy waste
But were as little summer skies—he glanced at my face.
From well ahead, my comrades called, and the prince smiled.
I saw the bride, the candlelight, the beast all wild.
Dully gleamed, from light on snow, a pendant round his neck;
Gilded from the womb, he wore such beauty
That he could not shed the palace he had fled,
Yet the odd slope of his smile claimed, unduly,
That he saw me among the richest men whom he had known—
He our prince dissatisfied with the glory of his throne!
He spoke to me. His voice was low
To the ground, creeping on hunter’s feet
Languid in the way of syrup, or an animal that knows
It’s dying. “Your friends,” he said, “wish to meet
With you.” Hence the Laws of Nature again trembled below
His weight: he was the candlelight; he was a glimpse
Through a bedroom window; the sun in darkness, an eclipse;
He was shrouded in a mantle wrought from immaterial;
He was divested and in waiting; he grieved an empty marriage bed.
He was his own weight in tarnished gold, a bell
For bellowing death’s toll; his line was dead
Though he yet lived; his colors stayed warm in the cold.
In his contradiction, he was a horror to behold.
Inhumanity was not
Wherein the prince’s horrors lay—
The man, not the animal, was caught
In contradiction I would say
Touches all men, leaves none unscathed—
With our survival only paved
By feet aplenty: fellowship,
Brothers-in-arms, the arms of our lovers,
The company we keep,
The builders, the bakers, our rivals and our mothers
Those to whom we hurry; those for whom we wait
—Thus did I realize the prince’s fate.
I understood. Our prince was going to die all by himself.
I, called by my comrades, would die with love—to the prince, in wealth.
’Twas madness then, thought I as I
Took one step back and looked to see
If he would spring—was it the animal alive
In him that watched my flight proceed?
But as I stood in the summer of his eyes,
We were two men, for a breath, wearing no other guise
But a waning man, isolate, in atrophy,
Lost where his contradictions led him—and me.
Toward another comrade’s call I turned. The prince’s fair
Face did not change when I left without him.
I looked back once. He stayed the same. Swallowing all but his gold hair,
He had the darkness draped about him.
