In the gloom they gather and the gloom they rule, lords
of the half-closed eye. Snare-hearted men who lost the light but would not
serve the dark, branded by sun and star.
(Beksynski)
No knights of the equator these, their castles ring the
utmost north, where they retire yearly for
week-long half-lit days, sending bright factotums into dark and sunlit
lands, seeking scrolls of forgotten verse and vases given as funeral gifts to
long-dead emperors.
Only here, at the interstice of time may they thrive for
they are sworn to shadow as a whole
and to the court of Mab. Their tents and pennants hung
with wooden wind-chimes which make their own music in the still air.
Here they drink from clouded glasses and dine on slices
of pale meats which they skewer with silver forks, served by fae with the heads
of whippoorwills and the bodies of upright foxes - dressed in tabards and
carrying bras anthophagous carnyx, or by huge snuffling hedgehog squires, or
pairs of orphans, one deaf, one blind, or ancient men, their grey beards
trailing on the earth.
Do they even have political views? Their minds like dusty
barns with swooping owls. They are desirous of fine China and will meet your
eyes in a silvered mirror. Adjacent to death they make congress with beautiful
ghosts, their tournaments attended by pale maidens for whose favour they quest.
Aye, anything for a dead maid. Why else should killers fear the gloom, and all
retire to sunlit lands?
Thus they hunt. Unmoving, they appear. Knights that
gallop not, congealing from mist, etching themselves from branch-shadows,
arising from the cambers of dark streams, under moss and willow. Soft-edged
knights whose hoof-beats sound like puddle drips, mist beading on their long
cloaks of Ungulix fur and Jabberwock skin. Helms capped with cupped hands,
tarnished silver owls, leafless bronze trees, gibbous moons, stooped crows or
tragedians masks in bronze. Shields picturing thistledown flowers, half-closed
eyes, half-open gates, half-drawn swords and half-suns bisected by smeared
half-clouds, or infinitely quartered blazons that can never be completely read.
Their lances quest like tentacles - curling into
tree-boles, under doors. The Knights ride lantern mares made of pale light.
Fretwork like branches. Pausing in the distance to dismount and fold up their
horse like a triptych which they carry like a shield.
Are they sniffing?
Are they whispering?
But nothing can escape them,
In the gloom.
Perhaps by closing your eyes, pressing the heels of your
hands into the ocular gap - producing utter dark - perhaps then they cannot
find you. For all that is half-see sings to them; the choir of the occluded.
Or by holding them in clear, full, un-occluded sight -
then they shall cringe and must act knightly, offer war or mercy and make
half-lit unbreakable oaths in whispered words like blinded bats.
They are closing in as the sky darkens and the silver
lyre plays, like leaves on slow water, they drift closer, barely seeming to
touch the earth.
As swift as the wind,
Silent as owls,
Gentle as a shave.
Colourless men lead forward by swords held like tweezers.
Swords which quest like hounds, sniff like cold noses, and shift in their hands
like weasels. Swords fed on chickens in the night. For these are no earthly
knights.
