In An Unfolding of Glory
by Michael Doyle

The playwright was dragged from public display
Of his satire written to illustrate another way
Thriving with an acrid taste of acrimony
That was held up with ridicule as sanctimony

As the Spanish Inquisition  held the world in chains
To bind the writer's thoughts wrapped up in vain
Putting poets in prison for expressing points of view
Though they are dressed up in stories, however true

Trappings of theater are to be put on life mock trial
Spending moments of reality caught on the endless mile
We plead guilty to the heard despite what passes for doubt
As we look for a way to find an idealist's way out

Bad poetry comes from the bottom of tortured souls
In which every player takes and plays for the player's role
Beginning in the studies of man's modern ways
Brooding the sanity in the truest ways of chivalry's days

Debauched and debased as the world often is and can be
He seeks the quests of Quixote and the ways of his duty
Accompanied by the truest of those who would be friends
And who will accompany the dreamer until the journey's end

In the discord of uneven song accompanied by nobility's dance
Onward to the as yet, unfolded glory of life's romance
Having seemingly endless patience, life deals its cards
Coming at us with all its fight and ever-so-biting hard

And there he goes full-force, tilting at windmills again
To the dismay and amusement of both foe and of friend
The battles that an errant knight seeks with savage illusion
Are those which seek reality and are his own ruinous intrusions

Even the worst critics are victims of their own vanity
While questioning the brave dreamer's tainted sanity
Life teaches us too often that it's all the same
Starry eyes and disabused love are too often held to blame

It's all in where true values may be hidden yet held,
Even when the best of life will not its favor yield
Life becomes a meaningless sort of endless game
And perhaps to most, it becomes as if it is all the same

In modern days when morality seems, at best ambivalent
One person's chivalric  dreams can still somehow be relevant
To the outcome of the passion plays that remains the story
And arrive at last, at the edge of the unfolding of glory

(c) August 3, 2023  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved