The Knight of the Knives

No apocalypse looms for him
On his way out of the system
There is nothing there is nothing
He repeats to himself breathing

He could pretend he is too sick
How is it despite disaster
After disaster he's still here
This can't go on too much longer

Now that I know I could have walked
Like a unicorn through the walls
And not die like the tapestry
Of myth captured in the Cloisters

I saw before being captured
By my own love of myth myself
He said he said he said he said
And then the wheel wound down and wept

I recall as a boy a book
Sat in my church's library
A cautionary paperback
For missionaries and our ilk

About the Mau Mau uprising
Of the Kikuyu in Kenya
As a machete massacre
Almost a martyrdom of white

Missionaries and families
With the lurid title The Night
Of the Long Knives it would be years
Before I knew of Hitler's purge

Of that name 1934
Decades before I discovered
The old German connotation
Of that phrase as general vengeance

Or heard that South African whites
Deployed it to express their fears
Of what would happen on the day
Or night Nelson Mandela died

But I knew the term was magic
Darkness and nightmare attending
The pure excitement of the end
He said he said he said he said