Lancelot's Vertebrae Poem by Robert Rorabeck

See the place and time of Lancelot's vertebrae
Stand out like a neon sign for
The eyes of women:
Cenotaph in the shape of a phallus, stone angel
Without wings,
Serpentine gallant, a pagan creche amidst the
Ferns of his anonymous burial plot-
Fallen aphrodisiac blessed by
The insincerity of its wizards-
There it lies for the elves in its Paleolithic
Forest: see it sunken underground in the
Immortal caves,
Spumed from its mother of coitus-
An esoteric talisman far greater that Arthur's
Excalibur- waiting for the awakening shadows
Of a falling society to awaken it-
To grow anew its anarchic body
Writhing with the pagan lovers crowned
In the underworld's stalactite monoliths,
Lactating with lurid translucence around its
Dieses of photo luminescent bone.