"Glory’s End" by Alessio Zanelli

Glory’s End

Alessio Zanelli

The painless warriors
And the loveless knights!
They do come unto me
With their icy lances
Aimed by their burning gazes.
They do come and make me stand up,
They do come and lift the stone
Which is weighing my heart down.
They do transfix the shield of sleep
And pierce through my bosom deep.
For Avalon does not exist
But in our dreaming minds,
For Lancelot stopped loving,
Merlin stopped mystifying
And Perceval stopped seeking
When still we were unborn.
For stains and shades by now
Cover each of us.
Nothing is worth
This epic labor.

Poet’s Notes:  If Hesitance At Camlann borrows stories from the Arthurian Legends to create a metaphor of our (often imaginary) struggles in life, this one, while also taking inspiration from some Arthurian characters, is simply symbolic and takes a step further, revealing what comes after such struggles, and how life—both the heroes’ and the common people’s—is like a turning wheel (remember Yeats’s famous poem “The Wheel?” http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/811/). “Glory’s End” dates back to 1995 and is written using quite old-fashioned style, diction and imagery to magnify the momentousness of the subject matter: once again man’s transitoriness, for all his endeavors and deeds; in other words, the end of things.