Guinivere’s Apple

By Stan Galloway

(a poem-in-progress)

 

“Tristram’s dead,” was all he said, and took

my hand to show his sympathy.  Our eyes

turned down, unmet, and studied there a bowl

of apples freshly laid by morning’s maid.

 

His fingers slid across my hand, unbidden,

warm, and dandled at my cuff, as if

to say, “We should have guessed,” “We tried our best,”

or “Nothing more that you or I can do.”

 

This was the hand that in the night had soothed

the daylight tensions, offered grace, accepted

me, assured my place beside him on

the throne, still warm and strong upon my own.

 

The apples glinted lively in the sun.

They, too, suggested warmth and firmness meant

to comfort, their bright redness overcoming

dull clay tinted gray from sturdy use.

 

I heard him sigh, a signal that our thoughts

for him must be respectful and regretful.

Nothing less would fit our station, nothing

else express a measured, fit goodbye.

 

My thoughts rode back two fortnights hence to weigh

some sense from Tristram’s parting words with me.

“I cannot stay,” he said.  “My heart is gone

and I must go to it.”  He was resolved.

 

“But hearts,” I said, “and wills are not the same.

Each part builds something larger – whole.”  He sneered and

lifted both hands to the moonless sky

and sifted air: “No heart – no life worth having.”

 

I thought he would return.  He’d gone before,

so many times, to Brittany and Cornwall,

Lyonesse and Ireland; he would

return with songs and rhymes, I thought. Farewell.

 

“How did it happen?” were the words I heard

come from my lips.  The words were hardly mine

but there was no one else to speak them. Slowly

Arthur raised his head, spurred by my voice.

 

My furtive eyes, with tact, observed him fix

the stone with meek command, to speak the message.

“Bedivere has said that he was taken

in the act of wooing Cornwall’s queen.”

 

This practiced proclamation from his royal

voice showed me his loyal, distant stance.

He would take time to reconcile words

with fateful chance and cold reality.

 

My Arthur sometimes lagged in joining thought

and act, deliberate to grasp the impact

of the words on life.  He dragged his eyes

with self-control to view the bowl of apples.

 

Red and bold they sat, plucked yesterday,

engendered by the tree that whispered through

the window, latent energy abiding,

each one waiting for its time to come.

 

His finger traced a line along my own

then he looked up, returned, his smile crooked

as it had been that first time he faced me

in my father’s hall when I was nine.

 

Even then I saw someone that I could

tease with and could trust.  He’d pulled the sword

in London just that day it seemed. His famous

reign began for me with that quaint smile.

 

I wonder where the decades now have gone.

He thirty-eight, I twenty-nine, it seemed

that all our life lay now behind us.  News of

death can make the fullest life deflate.

 

“He was more bold than wise, more heart than brain.”

This voice was just for me, his intimate,

his closed-door voice. This voice had told a daughter

in her father’s hearing she’d be queen.

Leodogrance had stammered when the king

then asked permission – how the memory makes me

smile – he had given half his castle

in the riant clamor of assent.

 

I, too, was pleased, though no one asked, to play

my part, unseen, but quite content, as Arthur’s

wife and Britain’s queen.  My role in life

could certainly oblige a lesser station.

 

“Sure, he was,” the voice went on, “a man

addicted to amusement.” Female charm,

he meant. “He never quite grew up, and yet

the best knight of the tournament hands down.

 

“Life was ever just a game to do.

His friends were pawns and knights and rooks, no bishops;

he did ever aim to check the queen –

not you, of course, but figuratively.”

 

He chuffled at the metaphor he made.

“And now the black king’s castled at the cost

of his dear queen.” “Isolt?” I asked, alarmed.

“Dying from the blade that pierced his back.

 

Unwise, like Zimri with some princess-whore

from Midian, he pushed incautiously

right through her chamber door. King Mark then coldly

entered to dispatch them with one thrust.”

 

I winced to think this privacy now shouted

from the castle roofs.  I was convinced

such shame occurred for hadn’t Gawen and

Ettard done quite the same though lived to tell?

 

But Tristram was no goat like Gawen, nor

was he an Absalom to use such means

to claim a throne. No, Tristram’s silver throat

was champion of song and game and joust.

 

He was the darling of the court.  His tongue

delighted lord and maid alike. He’d sung

to king and peasant, challenged noblemen

on board or field.  His only foe was envy.

Who would not have gladly changed his place,

his name, his face, with Tristram?  Who would spurn

the chance to please so many? Every woman’s

head would turn to find that voice’s face.

 

He’d flattered me, I’ve never told, when I

first came to Camelot.  “The dragon’s fire

never flares too close to his own heart,” 

he said as spry insurance from the flame.

 

I hadn’t thought of Arthur as a dragon.

Hand on mine, his gentleness swam over

other faults. One hardly noticed when he

sought more than he gave or snubbed a slave.

 

I’d swept aside the proposition deftly

as a courtesy, a compliment

acknowledged but rejected. So he sighed

and slept with someone else to soothe his hurt.

 

I didn’t know him then as I do now.

Perhaps I never really knew him as

I could have, as I should have. His a heart

on show was much more obvious than mine.

 

Yet, what a heart!  I envied his audacious

risk, his verbal art, his jeu d’esprit

that rivaled even Dinadin. When he

called Arthur “king of doormats” how I’d glared.

 

But two months later every straggling knight

could wield a lance much better than before,

each sword could bite much sharper, every rebel

lord began to yield to Arthur’s name.

 

This Arthur benefited, won renown

because a forest knight had dared affront

the crown.  No grasper, he was gone when Merlin

bared the Table seats folk talk about.

 

That crown lay cold on Arthur’s head, with more

than one great benefactor dead, gone down

in battle or in shame. And like his smile,

tilted, honor sat in hints of gray.

“You’re quiet, Mead,” he said. I smiled weakly,

here amiss, looked down.  A pet name, Mead,

I hated it yet never told him so;

he said my honey kisses made him drunk.

 

So I became his mead while others used

a cup. He meant to be endearing, I

concede, but failed in this attempt. “My wit

is bruised,” I said.  “Forgive me.  I’m distracted.”

 

“Understandable.” His hand moved to

the apple bowl and traced the Roman figures

crudely inked in former times.  Their days

had faded, lost like hour-glass sand displaced.

 

Respectful of my silence, patient-flawed,

he sat. Where lay the vigor that had burned

to rally men in tournament and battle?

Tristram was not so. I turned away.

 

The window framed a glorious day.  Along

the road a knight in blue and silver trappings

rode a gray horse to the apple tree.

He took the aimed-down lance and raised it up.

 

He snaked it firmly up between the brown

and green to reach a well-protected apple

left alone upon the crowning branch,

aspiring tip stretched high as it could go.

 

He shook the branch to make the ready apple

fall.  Then leaning out he dropped the lance,

and tumbling from the horse, he caught the tumbling

apple, pulled it to him, took the fall.

 

He bruised himself but not the tender fruit

he'd so retrieved.  He got up from the dust.

He took the treasure to his lips and tasted

full the sweetness he believed he’d find.

 

I thought that I could taste his triumph, taste

the salty sweetness on my tongue, my nose

could smell the soft bouquet, my eye could see

delicious satisfaction swell within.

 

I pulled the bed of apples to me, just

outside the reach of Britain’s king and took

the topmost apple, red, imploring, to my

teeth and bit into the white-dark core.

 

posted 5-10-04  revised 4-3-08 contact me sgallowa@bridgewater.edu