Tournament

Tournament

Kings and queens and thieves
By your leave and as you please
All the great come to glory’s field
Handed lances, swords and shields
You gain entry as only masters can
You’re noted, a power, much more than a man

You fight to win
Loss worse than sin
Only the winners remain
Others? Forgotten, insane
Before night comes
Ceremonies and deep bows
Trailed by coronets and cows

And our festival ground?
This furrow once a town
Stone heaps from cathedral cities
Newly exhumed without any pity
The cut boulders graced universities
Their burned scholars finally free
To sort the ways of God to man

Your song will sing of none of this
To know and not to speak
Is the privilege of the weak

The mountebanks now herded in a ring
At pain of death must choose their king
Perhaps it will be you?