King David's Lamb

A Poem by Paris Hlad

King David’s Lamb

The Tenth Rhyme of Jean Ami

But long before love tangled in the tree,[1]

I had a lamb whose faith was like the dawn;

And I did bear a sling and shepherd’s staff

To keep us safe in dreams we roamed upon

Such was my boyhood nature and my wont,

For children love things in a faultless way:

The Sacred Heart[2] beats in love’s holy act,

And nascent faith within has all the sway.

Oh, precious is that figment of my youth!

And muted is the dybbuk when I pray!

Oh, mended is my mind, and yet so sad

To see again what time would take away!

I am an old king, naked on his throne,

With sins lived out and whispers in my keep;

And yet the boy that loves the tender lamb

Still tends the hidden pastures of my sleep.

---

I recall a day in childhood, when I hunted with my uncle in the hills.

He had a hound named Zeus that wearied in our frenzied chase,

And in a rage did our good liege beat that old dog bloody.

I was so tender then that I had not the notion yet

That beating was a thing that could be done �"

And yet today I bear the guilt of seeing!

Why so?

Sometimes, a man condemns his noble mind

By taking in what merely drips upon him.

For certain evils, so tower over men

That they in burning droplets fall

And seep into the brow

Of him beneath.

And that has always been the case

In things like war and childhood.

For in mortal combat, common soldiers

Have no leeway to remove themselves

From evil or turn back the things

They see or come to know.

They are war’s martyrs

And its hapless b*****s,

For they are surely bound unto war's will!

It matters not what soldiers think

Of all they see and come to know;

For when their higher purpose is betrayed,

There is shame in having been made fools of evil.

And children have no hard-won knowledge

By which to judge the things they see.

They are chipmunks hopping near a cat

And know not what evil comes

Till they are chased and killed.

But King David was a shepherd boy

Who grew into a lion, stained in gore �"

For he knew the crimes of Mars too well

And fashioned many foreskins into favors.

He pretended, too, a loyalty to Saul,

And when the old king died, ‘tis said,

He wept -

But he was king thereafter.

And when Uriah would not sleep with fair Bathsheba,

The new king planned the Hittite’s timely murder.

Then, the God of Hosts did frown a little,

And David knew only war until a great sorrow

Overcame him in the Wood of Ephraim.

Yet for some hidden cause,

Ami did think himself a David! ‘

‘Tis true that favored warlike king was oft a poet,

But David's songs were sung with some ambition,

While Jean Ami’s are like our evening vespers.^{^[3]}

Yes, even in this, the match has not much value,

As David's voice did soothe a madness in his king,

Which won him royal favor;

While Jean Ami’s was left to fade among

The clods of dirt that smothered it.

They did perhaps as dreamers share

That great heart that sings the psalm,

But I do think they shared no more

Than that as poets or as men.

How oft a looking glass is true

Only in the hand that holds it.

[1] David’s third son, Absalom, rebelled against his father. He was killed in battle by one of David’s soldiers when his hair became tangled in an oak tree branch.

[2] The heart of Jesus Christ.

[3] Having grown up the son of a disabled combat veteran, Paris came to know many who experienced violence in the Second World War. He remembered only one of them regularly talking about combat from a personal perspective: “When he did, everyone else clammed up - Like maybe he should keep it to himself.”