Lancelot II

I am an old man now and have become
a myth someone invented.

I knew I had made myself different,
but the man I was,
was less reverent than the legend I became
and not as proud
as my enemies were of my sins.

Dying should have been easy.

My main mistake was to love,
but to not love well,
confusing love
with the pleasure of taking.

What I learned of strife
is that it is never arrested.
Like a mole I dug
in the earth
and sometimes would clutch
lost youth to myself as a crutch;

I learned that pain
is what life is mostly about,
that to complain
leads to lingering death that itself
is not without it.

I have wondered since
how different our lives might have been
had Fortune smiled on the Queen,
blessing her with child.