“. . . and palmers for to seken straunge strondes . . .”
- Chaucer -
“Our caravan is loath to stall
within your vale of shifting sands.
We heed an unremembered call,
an anonymity of tall
commands –
directives issued years ago
we palmers melodize in bands.
Verbs conjugate the bits we know;
uncertainty, we fain bestow
in “ifs” and “ands.”
We sing of Adams at their dawn
and Custards on their final stands,
Napoleon as king and pawn
and Jesus in his spindly brawn –
his godliness and glands.
Our caravan is loath to pause;
for there are yet more distant lands
and folks within them tending laws,
performing to their gods’ applause
and bowing to their reprimands.
‘Twas good to hear your views upon
the good and bad from human hands
and with you greet this newest dawn.
But now we must continue on
to foreign shores and ever stranger strands.”