tHe Hunting Of tHe Unicorn

Begin the Fabled Chase

How oft we’ve heard the tales of beasts obscure
That some call legends, some call wistful thought—
And yet brave men and women both have sought,
And set out lonely across wood and moor,
And sailed by distant sea to distant shore,
Undaunted, though their way with risk be fraught.

Equipped with merely what their packs could hold,
Sheltering ‘neath rocks and crags and trees,
Not flinching in sun’s heat, nor winter’s freeze,
And guided only by those stories old—
Silent, patient, reckless, fearless, bold,
Assaying proofs of strange hypotheses.

From musty books on shelves in cellars deep,
Murmured from parchments folded and forgot,
Their voices echo like the blunderbuss’s shot
Through valleys dark and gloomy gorges steep—
Far off, but near enough to break our sleep
And rudely shear our dreaming threads of thought.

“Unicorns,” they whisper, “do exist—
In fact, I saw one with mine own two eyes,
And mounted it, and rode it cross the skies,
Majestic captain of the clouds and mist,
Shaking my broadsword in my victor’s fist
Wildly spurring on my long-sought prize.”

We gasp awake, our longing heart a’racing
While all the world lies deep in quiet rest;
All quiet but the thunder in one breast,
And rap of two feet set to frantic pacing,
And snap of buckles, tightening of lacing—
We know the time has come for our own quest.

So out our door we glide into the night
And set our course by compass and by star—
The road before us cutting like a scar
Through wild forests rolling out of sight
Towards a mountain terrible in height,
Whose vile cleft gapes like two jaws ajar.

But when that morning breaks, the trees break it
And hold the light back with their ancient boughs—
How soft we go then, fearing we might rouse
Some freakish troll asleep within his pit,
Or by some ogre’s boulder-hurl be hit,
Or stumble on some wicked dwarves’ carouse.

Twixt stakes and spears with knight-skulls decorated,
Past words of warning carved in brutish runes,
By piled bones of rabbits and racoons
Strewn through with shattered goblets silver-plated
(The dinner scraps of goblins never sated),
Cross stagnant streams and festering lagoons—

We soldier on, and trust our course is true!
For days the path winds deeper through the waste,
And as our courage grows, so grows our haste:
Ahead, the forest’s edge comes into view,
When of a sudden, what comes frisking through?
Our unicorn—not knowing he is chased!

At once our eyes meet: he knows all,
Knows well why we have come, knows all we want,
And snorts at such presumptuous affront;
Then, bolting like a racehorse from his stall,
He’s gone before one step of ours can fall.
And so begins the trial of the hunt.

Out of wood and into day we stride,
The sunlight blinding to our wontless eyes—
Though soon our sight returns; we see the rise
Of that accursed mount, on every side
Beset by desolation far and wide,
Unbounded leagues as empty as the skies.

No green thing grows, no water flows or falls,
But sand and rock stretch on and on and on;
If ever life lived here, it has long gone—
Unless in caves below, some laggard crawls
And scrapes out sad subsistence with its claws,
Condemned to night with ne’er another dawn.

But now a heavy dusk is falling fast;
We tuck ourselves beneath a hanging ledge,
Nesting like an urchin in his hedge,
Kept safe from venomed fang and biting blast—
The first night in so many we have passed
That does not set our fear-wracked nerves on edge.

Although outside a hellish tempest blows,
Our slumb’ring visions wander in the sun
Of future days when we, our journey done,
Greet the nuzzle of our new friend’s nose;
Wherever one of us, the other goes.
Our fates, once woven, cannot be unspun.

Alas when such dreams prove delusive hope—
As now do ours—beneath a cloudless sky
Wakened to wander gulch and stone field dry,
Roused to hateful heat and dreadful slope,
Beaten beast-like to all fours, to grope
Towards the menace of that mountain high.

Hour by hour, we feel our minds are caught,
Like stranded, shriv’ling fish within our skulls,
Gasping their repeated dying calls:
Water! Water! Our souls for but a draught!
Forgetting all besides we ever sought,
Insensate of whatever else befalls.

The last thing we remember is the peck
Of bone-white beak, the leering blood-red gaze—
A stinking, wretched vulture, come to graze
Upon the dying dead—her turtleneck
Of nauseous feathers, bedecked with speck and fleck
Of putrid marrow splattered in a glaze.

From whence this devil came, we well can guess—
Belike she’s fed on other strays before,
And, perched on yonder mountain, waits for more,
Bite by bite their bodies to undress,
Defile their corpses in corrupt caress.
Our thoughts go silent, certain what’s in store.

As when in unfamiliar bed we wake,
Unconscious how we came to where we lie,
So now we open one bewildered eye
(The other cradled in a fragrant brake)
And see before us glistening a lake
Clear and calm beneath a starlit sky.

How deep we drink then, doubting still if we
Be dreaming—or have passed beyond all dreams,
Awake within a world that only seems
To teem with life, but in reality,
A place where only death and dead things be,
Forever hidden from the sun’s warm beams.

Yet as we drink our fill, we soon discern
That where we kneel is no dark netherland—
It is the very mountain we had planned
To scale, the broken summit we did yearn
To reach! But hark—what noise is that? We turn,
and see our quarry, standing on the strand.

How softly he approaches now, the moon
Outlining him so gently in her glow—
Each step he takes a question, spoken slow—
We sit a statue of living marble hewn
And with our quiet eyes aim to commune
That we would be a friend and not a foe.

The minutes pass, and soon he is so near
That we might touch him if we dared to stir:
He bends his mystic horn as though it were
A scepter to release us from our fear,
And so anoint us as his friend and peer,
And grant us all such privileges confer.

But in that moment, something tells him, “Run!
Run with all thy might in every stride!
Show them all the speed that is thy pride,
Unmatched by any beast beneath the sun!”
And just when we had thought our journey done,
The way spreads out before us, wild and wide.

Whate’er your quest, whatever prize you chase,
May you never lack resolve to see it through,
Or confidence to keep the course that’s true—
May you mind that haste is not what wins the race,
But a dogged and determined steady pace—
Our fellow seekers, we raise a glass to you.