Galahad
Heaven’s harnessing strap him
tight from misdemeanour,
in unpierceable armour. He moves
visored to cross temptation’s
landscapes. White-haloed,
under a white sun’s aureole,
relentless in a sparer light that eats the blood’s needs,
he scales rainbows to earn
communion with marching stars,
withholding a face that denies
the world’s mirrors. The fist
that scorns the apple unsheathes
to slice the snake. He rides
unshadowed to that austere
appointment with a tin cup
in a glass country beyond
Camelot’s prancing, outside
plastic honour and vows, beyond
Astolat’s shabby bedrooms or
Excalibur’s wet nest, even further
than Avalon’s sanitary mirage.
Text © Keith Howden
