The Guns at Metz

For a poetry contest concerning personal reaction to a historical event.

The sky was on fire
like the castle below
flames and smoke and dust
clawing at the heavens.
The men in rough armor
behind their walls
clamored and wept.
Mustn’t they have?
The wall had fallen
to a shrieking demon, something unseen by mortal eye
till this very day
and it had chosen them to be its prey
trapped now in their mighty, impenetrable fortress
beneath the flag of Metz.

That was the day, I guess,
when Faerie died in the west.
The castles and stones and knights
and princesses and towers and shining shields
and sorcerers, dragons, and mystic swords
were swallowed up
in woeful
Invention.

Iron shards tore the very air
driven by the roar of the monster,
the shout and swell of the hordes
their war-cries borne on the breeze –
The hungry god demanded sacrifice
and with blood and flame declared
the new religion of the world:
no honor, no valor, no dignity in war
no magic, no more,
and the old order fell to ugliness;
the fairies fled into the dark recesses of time long past
beneath the sky at Metz.