I’ve added a few more stanzas to my last poem. Please enjoy.
The prisoner, amid ghastly jailers,
walks with a head bent low by his failures.
He is a hub with heavy chains for spokes.
They rattle around his neck like a yoke.
Terminating each branch marches a guard.
Sometimes jerking his leash, one will retard
this dreary half-dead victor’s procession
to ask the soldier a mocking question.
“You who fear not dying, what say you now?”
No answer comes, for silence is his vow,
say he drops his head still lower at the taunt.
They parade onward after this grim flaunt.
In times now passed, under weight of chain mail
—weightier chains when compared on a scale—
leading the charge, he outpaced mounted hosts,
but now stands he rooted as if a post.
Taking no more steps, the soldier then halts,
and his own head he finally exalts.
A spectator he spies amid the throng.
His powerful eyes hold the other long.
He wishes to flee, this man in the crowd,
but the prisoner’s stare has him there cowed.
The eyes will speak, seeing the lips will not.
The bright spheres know by what means they were caught.
Tale Told 