Paul Lake
February 2005

Charlemagne's Vision


Remembering his father's last campaign
To purge the south of Saracen and Moor
And how Grandfather stopped the tide from Spain,
Driving the Muslims from the fields of Tours,
King Charlemagne surveyed the scattered dead
At Roncesvalles, where Roland's ivory horn
Lay shattered on the ground beneath his head,
Then left his slaughtered Paladins, to mourn,

And saw, in troubled sleep, a second Rome
Encoiled by hydra heads—a living net
Encircling London, Paris, Amsterdam,
Each serpent-head poised like a minaret
Above the drowsy heart of Christendom—
Loud cries, bright shafts, red flames, a streaking jet,
Then bodies bowed down in a vast salaam.

First published in The Sewanee Review.