A palace reigned upon a lofty seat
Its prince was dressed in garments made from air
The bread he ate was baked from beads of wheat
He wrote of love beyond a village fair
His bliss you see was all deluding lures
And full of fancies lost in maddening mirth
His realm remained a cosy cage that mures
Defiant, he left to travel round the earth
He dashed downhill to vales and bales of hay
And saw his slaves, in peasant garb, at work
They’d plod away and plough the pleats of clay
To grow some grain, for him, in mud and murk
And down on dunes and lowlands scorched by heat
Elysian fields rewarded warfare strife
He’d read the myths and forged his romance feat
In which he’d burn a town to claim some wife
Departing Troy, he trudged along the beach
And heard the mermaids moaning low at sea
He dived where monsters are within our reach
The fish of darker depths so hard to see
He faced the freaks inside, which sleep in silt,
So strange but strong, the fiends that test the truth
Of life and love, beguiled by ghosts and guilt
In doubt he’d made a trip around his heart
What now? He wasn’t the wiser, though he learned
His heart, untruthful guest, deserved no trust
Its woes and wounds, its joys and jest, he spurned
And yearned for, till they proved more dense than dust