A ‘falchion’, from the Old French

is a sword. It cuts swathes like the Persian scimitar

and digs through bowels as the Chinese Dao does.

But it is its own, itself: a sword, from the Old French.

A specific means of death.

The incision that was made becomes apparent

and blood hurries to the surface after the mid-air cartoon pause.

The stench of blood undrying. Battles rewind, soldiers come to

life.

And what you were saying was that people were dying

on the end of this particular kind of knife?

Knowledge is the great unstaunchable wound.

A sword is a sword is a sword. But

what sort? And a word, yes, means nothing by itself,

is simply a point which impales, pins a specimen of reality to the

paper

so we might squint and imagine how it once flew.

And nowthey're everywhere, and when someone wields the word

I hold my hands up. I say, yes, a sword, from the Old French. Yet

before

I must have run through many pages, escaping harm, not knowing

the pointed syllables had sharp edges and that I scanned so close

to danger

and failed to notice the sun catching at the quilloned crossguard.