Dark Night of the Stone

Freezing fingers clutch the silver cup

The thin but faithful horse stands grace

Equine feelings urge Gawain, “Go on”

The mountain stream adds ice; its own

Completing miseries’ embrace

——-

How did we come to this, Gawain?

His frozen thoughts; the pain, protest

How did we seek a place unknown

To pay the debt we shouldn’t own

From Christmas last, a bitter jest!

——-

He fingers coins, full purse of spite

“Perhaps I’ll buy a rooml!”

But round him snow and frozen streams

Speak far of warming tavern’s dreams

And icy wind that offers only doom

——-

A mind, half starved, breaks off a branch

“May I divine a place to Yule!”

The joke is lost on blackening fells

Which long for village evening bells

Far from that place where death’s the only rule

——-

His strength no more can fight the cold

He draws…