Folk Hero

Folk Hero

A lyric of screams
writes itself on the wall

Or was it the prisoner’s hand that wrote?

Once I could summon
Horses at will

Once I could fight
Strange wars with evil skulls

But that was long ago…

Then they trapped me with
Their poisoned grapes

I can tell you
I was suspicious of them always

But the air of the home
And the cool wine of the hosts
Killed the fireflies
I had sheltered in my fingers…

I limped about the house
With its cries of crooked newborns…

I could not grip my magic arrows again;
Arrows that shot hurricanes once…

Crowds came to see the miracles,
I remember…

I could
create rain…

Mind you, not all of us can create

But that was long back…

An epic of screams
shrivels the blue garden

Now I scream at the guards at times;

Or play cards with the hosts,
Weeping when I lose the King…

I think my own land
Has forgotten my stories

The bauls don’t sing of me anymore, I think.