Old-recipe bronze

Ibañeta (Roncesvalles Pass), Kingdom of Navarra, Spain

(taken Sunday, 5 June 2016)

where, 15 August 778 CE, Roland sounded his great horn Oliphant, said, according to one legend, to be a unicorn horn from India... and where, afterwards, he and his entire rear guard were massacred in the battle

Old-recipe bronze

With their sharp swords thrust to throw the sun back into the sky they engage in brutal art—
their ancient helmets beaten from plates of old-recipe bronze studded with blinking gold
and red and green gems that are worn and chipped from blows by bronze and wood wielded by bearded
warriors more than one hundred years old who have hacked and speared through muscle bone sinew
and organ for eighty or some ninety or more of their years on earth and upwards to the bright sky that masks heaven fly the sparks of metal against metal and the fine clear
red spray from severed artery and vein spreads the light through tiny glass-like refracting
drops, and you taste it and you are blinded by what runs from your scalp into your eyes and
in the frozen eternal moment comes glorious and painful death—to be gored by spear and thrown from your steed after the blow of holy metal clefts your skull down to the
throat through old-recipe bronze studded with blinking gold and red and green gems worn and chipped.