Book hungry hero riding in the wrong

direction, galloping so strong and certain

with an historic crack across your brow,

gawky and gaunt, time’s angular knight-errant.

Clearly you wear a woodcut for a face

and caricature’s become a kind of habit;

and no one quite accepts your crooked lance

as lethal, least of all on this slack Sabbath.

Scholar with too much wormwood in your skull

to sally early — old windmills to conquer

and dragons’ fiery phlegm; against the sun’s

fierce disk, ridiculous in quirky armor:

I see you striding towards the intense feast

of the imagined quest beyond the failing

of our satiric cries; and the fat dwarf

beside you props your famished frame from falling.