One Day In the Life of Chrétien de Troyes - A Fellow Jongleur's Tale My part is now complete, I have left the feast replete With tales of love and tragedy and heroes' deeds, Slipped out the back and joined the kitchen folk, least Of the castle's crew, yet sharing in the needs That prince and peasant share. Yet from these folk I go For I am not of them. My way is on the road Telling these tales of knights. Chrétien was right, though; Though not a bard of Wales, these tales of old will goad My happy throng of listeners to live a life of past And future days. These tales of Arthur's court and knights, From half a dozen centuries now fled will last The eve, and feed the need to make some sense of frights And loves and longings of these fierce and bitter days Of 'chivalry,' of quests and wars Crusading East. And I am glad this Briton's tales and tragic lays Are meat and bread for us, from noble to the least Of peasantry. I do not mind. But tales of France, The Paladins that thronged the court of Charles the Great, Sit in my mouth like bitter ash. Better the lance And pennon of a time three hundred years in date More distant than tales of Holger, Dane, Who guesting with Morgana Fey did find his time Long fled, his people past, the court of Charlemagne A hundred years turned dust. For in that morbid rhyme I find myself, stranger in the lands I bring These gestes and tales. Better the matter of England's Graal For me than Matter of France. An so I prate and sing My way across these lands, with threshing tales as flail. Chrétien's lais have brought to Arthur's tale the Graal And songs of Lancelot, weaving in the threads Of Tristan, telling yet again the measured scale And weight of Love that's lost before its birth from heads And hearts of those enthralled in its doomed and fated net. And adding Lancelot to tales of Love in vain, Kindling in these hearts where hope has long since set, Burning them in memory of desire's stain. For these Crusades have made us frugal, counting cost Of marriage price and golden dowry, so now we wed In practicality (though not for me, I lost My chance for either love or gold, now dead To hope's own passion). And 'Courtly Love' is now the talk Of ladies and their maids within these stony walls As through abandoned, perfumed gardens they slowly walk, Thinking how the chain of duty about them falls And traps them in their place. In Guinevere They see themselves, and Lancelot their home-bound loves While husband Arthur fares Crusading East, far From the castles, fields, and cotes of these fair doves. But all these tales are dreams and unreal fabled jest To one like me, unreal as unicorns or sea's Own mermaids, Melusines, distilled from our own best Imaginings. Better the stings of wasps and bees For me than Hope, Pandora's cruelest joke on lust. No, I shall tell my tales and slip away, and take The chance to leave, to find where other castles rust And need a troubadour to sing real the fake. copyright E Glas Durboraw, June 18, 2002 - Mobile