“… Added to my load,
I am to pay the duties that are owed
To God, for Him I am to curb my will
In all the lusts that cattle may fulfill.
A dead beast has no punishment or pain,
But after death a man must weep again
That living has endured uncounted woe;
I have no doubt that it may well be so.”
—Chaucer—
The Canterbury Tales
“The Knight’s Tale”
(1386)
[modernized by Neville Coghill, 1952]
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An Allegorical Romance
More than once
(yes, and all throughout time)
Beauty sparked obsession in growing mind.
The Good Beauty lived in a distance place
though it may have dwelt no further than a pace.
Without proof the kindled mind knew it was True,
so an adventure had to be carried through.
Like gravity pulls ripe fruit to the earth,
the lad was led to prove his worth.
No sooner than he launched out
he noticed dryness in his mouth.
He grew hungry and ached with thirst
when over a hillside a jangling band burst.
It was a carnival of sorts,
which laughingly fed him.
He hallucinated a hell most grim,
then his eyes grew dim.
When he awoke he was in his shorts,
felt guilty as sin,
pledged to God to avoid the carnival if he saw it again,
and saw, like a distant castle through a fading mist,
a vision of the Good True Beauty
which his battered soul missed.
Following his heart
he was swept in a river,
and woke up in the claws of a dragon.
“Don’t fear,” the dragon said,
“In the water you bumped your head.”
The valiant youth asked, “Why haven’t you eaten me yet?”
“Eat you?” the dragon laughed,
and burped flaming gas,
“I love you.”
The dragon was flying with the lad in his claw,
then scooped him up with a wing and place him on his back.
They were circling around the castle of the Good True Beauty,
and she was screaming from her window.
The dragon said, “I’m gay.”
“You’re not homophobic are you?”
The knight kept his eyes fixed in the center of their flight path,
The orbit of his affections.…
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NEW PURITAN 