I
In all your hot-brained madness, you were right.
We didn’t understand. It seemed to us
You’d lost your mind, but we had lost our sight.
All we could see was the sun and choking dust
Blinding us to your suffering. While night
Alone stands guard, your sword and armour rust.
Our sadness cannot salve, cannot enhance
Your last adventure, your last broken lance.
II
Tirant lo Blanch would forgive us your death
Finding a way to make it seem splendid
The Golden Ass brays out all magic breath
Giants populate the hills attended
By whirling white circles, a shibboleth
Challenge rings out as vast arms descended.
Enraptured by the giants we have built
We think there are no windmills left to tilt
III
Years later, when archeologists came,
Your body lost in changes to the church,
Your flayed rib and your crippled arm betrayed
Your identity. The barefoot nuns searched
And ransomed you. An Algiers slaver’s trade
That pulled you from the dark, alive but scorched
By prison’s psychic vortex, to the balm
Of discalced sibilant assuaging psalms
IV
And when he came to die, he did not perne,
Retract, apostatise. Cuirasses rust,
Released to cobwebs. No longer did he yearn
For combat, but ceded the field to trust.
Cervantes sent him that he might return
To sanity through madness, light through dust.
With Sancho at his bed we sadly kneel
Praying we know what is and isn’t real.