Work Text:
And the King shall come again.
So say their tales. Parchment, paper, riddle, rhyme,
They're all the same: false hopes, fools' dreams of home
Turned lays and garnished lies to staunch their grief.
The fallen castle rebuilt by insects,
The bright shards gathered in the broken hand.
He said to me, "Take my hand."
When the fires failed and the rain began again,
Our foes on the dead ground dying like insects,
Thunder rhythm rolled and their groans made strange rhyme.
He saw me sudden struck with foreign grief.
He bade me, "Take my hand. I'll take you home."
Illyria had no home.
She had a hall and then a tomb. Her hand
An instrument of ecstasy or grief
Dealing death without heed, over and again.
When she herself died, none mourned her in rhyme.
Shall the mountain lion be mourned by insects?
Tears fly from my eyes like insects.
I am split open, othered, keening for home
That never was, Texas lilt and nursery rhyme,
And on my shoulder the touch of his cool hand.
What awful magic brought her back again
Craving these base touches and teaching me grief?
How do mortals rule their grief?
The body buried, food for squirming insects,
Bound in cloth and gold, or burned, reduced again
To molecules, locked in jars and kept at home.
"Memory has no tomb!" I cried. And in my hand
He put paper and riddles, a tome—of rhyme.
Can such be tamed, trapped in rhyme?
I fondly ask. Such living, clamouring grief
Brought to numbers by the ruthless poet's hand,
A ranked, obsessive march of words like insects.
These all the tools I have to bring me home:
Self-taught promises: the world turns round again.
Speaking in rhyme to understand insects,
Mortified and mad with grief, rewriting home
With shaking hand: thus the King is come again.