Steeped in the humanity they’re stripped of . . .
her last words are my first but take my breath.
Another sonnet prompts: talking of love . . .
Love’s stone, Wolfram’s Kaaba Grail, fell to earth
with angels neutral in God’s civil war.
Between these lines, another thing with feathers
flies through no man’s land to guide here Feirefiz,
Parzival’s bonnie Saracen half-brother
whose skin Wolfram likened to words on vellum.
I’d suggest his text was spelling peace,
but that’s a stretch enough to split a drum.
Yet hope may nest in some page’s white space,
waiting for the language that makes war fail.
Its inkwell would mean more than any Grail.
The best thing one can be is an alibi
for light and darkness
where the last words are your first – ‘The Beginning of Poetry’, Adonis, trans. Mattawa
Fighting you, I was fighting myself – Parzival toFeirefiz, ‘Parzifal’, Wolfram von Eschenbach
War is what happens when language fails – Margaret Atwood
new boots and pantisocracies 