Courage

Courage knows there is no Happy Ever After

The Courage of lips pressed tight, hands sore on worn hilts of swords.

“Hold the line” someone says, a dog, barking.

There are black clouds in the sky, the fog of decay,

Rising up from last season’s dead, they held the line.

Their rusted blades lie there still, be heard—

We shall not forget you, you rotten old bastards.

Bastards, bullies, thieves, and all. Those who tried to run and died

All the same. The needle carves its groove,

With blood and steel between two banners,

A great general, now a tattooist,

Tattooing over and over the same blood red tale on,

Two sides of the same land.

On warriors and witches he carves.

Afterwards the general is quiet, he

Has seen too much death, and his mouth is stuffed full.

But we hold the line. “Take Courage, friend,” mutters the Troubadour.

Tongue forked like a snake. Tasting her own truth.

She will be dead by dawn. Ash and mulch by next season.

A tongue that lies, must it be cut out?

What Courage is there in the mud, dying in your piss?

But we hold the line. No hope now.

Our rotting fingers will stink as they hand on Druj belts as trophies

Alongside fox heads, otter heads, the heads of dead rabbits.

The Troubadour beside me says—

“And so this is Courage, my friend,”

But what about the smell, the rancid smell?

The screams, the sweat, the dying man calling for “mam”?

And the Troubadour lifts her spear with her one arm.

The face is that of a dead woman now but she is grinning.

She has the Courage of the damned—

We do not die for peace, or hopes of “no more tears”,

Our deaths were a greater gift

We made a promise more absolute.

A bloody vow to Courage alone.

That stuff that holds when all else burns.

~ Ranae

(With credit given to Sylvia Plath, whose poem, the Courage of Shutting Up, proved inspirational and was quoted in places.)