Where Kings Lie
Have we, in our wanderings through
storied lands, tramped upon
purple earth cradling the sleep of kings?
Perhaps, far beneath our ambling feet,
in crypts sealed by the amnesia of centuries,
in sarcophagi dusted with a memory of pomp,
there have been tyrants who lay with nightmares,
though long freed from the reign of maggots?
Have we stood, unknowing, above
the dried husk of a despot,
his memory scattered, yet
his hand still sticky with the blood of a thousand foes
and the quavering kisses of knights and cardinals?
Have our voices disturbed the secret repose
of a czar or caesar who was not sufficiently brutal
to slaughter hope or outlaw love?
Maybe our footsteps, soft as they were,
have echoed the roaring hooves of an army
sent to war not for rubies or territories,
but a woman’s heart?
And when you and I passed through,
on our wanderings across these storied, hoary lands,
we were two unchronicled drifters,
accidentally crowned by a wakeful moon above,
and, below, so much kingly slumber.
Copyright © Bernard Chan | Year Posted 2019
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