Three Dead Kings

At first only grunts, and hoof thuds heavy as horses',
over the hill that was silver
with the peeled paper bark of its birches

came a boar-shaped sound
which grew to an actual animal:
calm, bough-dappled darkness; a heart

magnetically thumping in a cubbyhole
as shouts and sennets took on flesh and metal.
In that hollow a hounded animal ended

surrounded by gillies and dog squabbles
with punctured sides and cobbled hooves
pegged out, back to the earth,

and with the barrel-chested look
of never having had to leave their lands
the three lords left him.

*

The three lords left him
...