POEM AFTER A MEETING TO DISCUSS
THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL

"There are of course technical problems, but not insurmountable, really. It is getting people to think rationally about nuclear issues that is the big obstacle, and we haven't found the solution to that yet."
- Nuclear industry spokesperson, Oct 1, 00

Guinevere shaking in grief on the convent floor,
Blood aflame for her two lost men:
Lancelot's great limbs smashed forever,
Arthur's regal eyes degraded into emptiness --
And the other losses, the endless losses -- The court alive with love,
The favours everywhere bestowed,
The heart on the sleeve, the heart in the mouth,
The tourneys in the high sun like an oriflamme,
Beautiful men playing beautifully at death,
And all about the Table Round, lutes and roses.

And then the Grail descended
suspended over the Table the voices
And in the incandescent ecstasy the circle
dissolves into desire --
Parsifal, the fool,
Galahad, full of himself in the mirror of metal,
Gawain -- all the expected ones, but also
Lance, her Lance --
To set out somewhere other than her heart
For his holy grail....
Guinevere curls up on the convent floor
Like a fly fallen on a hot stove.

"My Lord, let us seek out this Grail
Throughout the world, for if we but had
the cup that held the blood of Christ, then ---"

Then? in the end Arthur dead,
Lancelot stricken,
and as the days darken round,
Guinevere
weeps her days away in a wild waste land
where no birds sing;
And no arm rises from no lake,
clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
To draw the poison down.
-pt.