Six Conflicts: III

Technology

This modern world
- modern; he likes to roll the word
On his tongue
Like a sugary lozenge
That he unwraps with careful,
Weapon-scarred hands –
Is a curious combination of
Inaction and speed.

The pushing, tapping, poking
At buttons while seated and staring
At things bright and glaring
Is enough to drive him mad.
The rush of wind through his hair
- the ghost of fingers
in a hazy caress –
On the buses, trains, cars
Is an unexpected thrill,
The thrust of blood
Through his veins
In the last moments before the herald
Called Slay on.

He feels feeble, less of a man
To press a button and watch a fire burn
Than to perspire over the heave of an axe
And the minor thunder-crack of
Splitting logs.
He feels cheated,
Aching with unslaked vengeance
When police swarm a criminal,
A foolish boy who thought to
Take on a knight.

He is still a knight,
Armor or no armor –
He can hear the clamor
And screams,
Steel on flesh,
Arrows zipping through air
At Badon Hill
and Camlann's green.

A man's strength,
He ponders, and he misses
The comforting weight
Of a sword at his hip,
Like the familiar presence
Of Cafall trotting at his heels,
Is lost to the strength of machines.

The world is clean lines,
Too-bright lights,
Inhuman precision in
Razor-sharp corners on tables
And crow-flight straightness
In the legs of chairs.

The roughness of wood
From a man's uneven strokes
By blade on branch,
Curved to fit human hands
Is evidence of effort,
Blood, sweat and tears
Poured into the soil
Of the harvest of a man's labor.

Under cover of darkness
He roams the cool grass,
Barefoot to slip on dew,
Ears alert for the song of a
Grasshopper, the call of a
Bird, and winds his hands
In the motions of battles gone by.

By day he smiles,
Presses buttons,
Hands slow and clumsy
And deliberately gentle.
He learns to move to the unnatural
Thump, thump, imitation war-drums
Modern children call music
And ignore the constant noise –
Chatter, pings, flood of information –
But Albion sings in his blood,
And when he kneels in an open field,
He can feel her.

I am alive.