Done. A millennium’s rough prolegomena,
drafting an enterprise new and unsure.
The tale is more and less than the sum of its parts –
for all of the better moments lie in vignettes,
and the whole is just an afterimage.
And me? I’m narrator, chronicler, chanticleer,
occupying an unticketed seat in the rear,
revealing myself just at the climax.
Maybe I come forth to save the plot, maybe not –
for unrehearsed interruptions are in poor form
and the Players’ Affiliate has its dues,
never a disinterested brother’s keeper.
But the hero tends to become his own author:
spectacle spinner, baron of broad strokes –
catching hell from the travesty’s underwriter.
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