2 of 30, 2016

Alexander Nevsky Offers Tribute to the Khanate

O Lord, deliver me
a thousand blond hearts
and their steel, the poison
letters of the iconoclast
salesmen, the cold family
gnashings of the Rus:
I shall bleed them

dead with my signet. Not,
God, the Tatars. War is a path
most peoples learn. A prodigy
at nineteen, they let me learn
none else--but still,
a student. The Khan's
emissary carried letters:
Those who mean against
us, we shall show them

the thing we know. They know
war unlearned. They will plough
where they need into Steppe.
You know how I ache to accept
Your orders, Beloved Lord, but
my heart fears Christendom
is a favor the Golden Horde allow.
O let me bow. Let me offer to Caesar

what Caesar will take anyhow.

from a prompt by Hal Johnson