His Shield

The pin-swin or spine-swine

(the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out,

   echidna and echinoderm in distressed-

pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine,

the rhino with horned snout–

   everything is battle-dressed.

Pig-fur won’t do, I’ll wrap

myself in salamander-skin like Presbyter John.

   A lizard in the midst of flames, a firebrand

that is life, asbestos-eyed asbestos-eared, with tattooed nap

and permanent pig on

   the instep; he can withstand

fire and won’t drown. In his

unconquerable country of unpompous gusto,

   gold was so common none considered it; greed

and flattery were unknown. Though rubies large as tennis-

balls conjoined in streams so

   that the mountain seemed to bleed,

the inextinguishable

salamander styled himself but presbyter. His shield

   was his humility. In Carpasian

linen coat, flanked by his household lion-cubs and sable

retinue, he revealed

   a formula safer than

an armorer’s: the power of relinquishing

what one would keep; that is freedom. Become dinosaur-

   skulled, quilled or salamander-wooled, more ironshod

and javelin-dressed than a hedgehog battalion of steel, but be

dull. Don’t be envied or

  armed with a measuring rod.