The Illusory Army

Published in the anthology ‘Quixote, Poems East of La Mancha’

The Illusory Army

From a distance, I caught sight

Of an army of fierce soldiers.

They wore yellow ribbons and were ready

To take over our precious, scarce

Land and our unassailable city.

‘Let’s fight the enemy!’ I told amigo Sancho.

I hoped to get some tanks,

But those were to be found 

Only across the border

And Rocinante was too tired

To gallop that far.

I climbed up the roof of the HSBC headquarters

To take possession of the two cannons

Pointing at the Bank of China.

But once up there,

It turned out that they were

Useless cranes.

Sancho told me

That what I had seen

Was not an army,

Of brutal soldiers.

Those were only

Innocuous umbrellas

Opened by young women and men

As symbol of defiance and resistance.

We should not fend them off, he said.

They represented a concrete possibility

Of a future with more freedom

Of choice.

But the army was blocking the traffic,

And it was fast spreading like plague,

Suffocating people under its menacing canopies

That brought the city to a halt.

I had to tear them apart,

With my lance.

And leave them defeated,

Like deflated balloons,

Popping and dropping

On reconquered soil.

Sancho refused to follow me.

He said he was jaded now, blasé

About my every whims and fancy.

I had been chasing deceptive chimeras,

Shadows of reality never meant to come true,

Misleading hopes for a city

That only obeyed superior orders.

Still, I was determined to attack,

Alone,

The yellow swarm of youngsters

Hidden behind dummy parachutes

That would not save them if they fell.

Just when I was ready to charge,

Sitting tall on Rocinante

With a lance in my hand,

Some young soldiers

Came closer

And invited me under their umbrellas.

Many welcoming umbrellas –

I finally reckoned.

Even the gloomy sky looked different

Under their shade.

The friendly army,

In need of knights

And determined to stand up for their ideals,

Asked me to stay.

The soldiers knew that we crave for

Illusions

To get to the truth,

Dreams

To construct a better reality.

I did not tell them

That I was born to live dying,

Victim of the power of imagination

And succumbing to misfortunes,

Because

There’s always hope in life,

And it was no use

Scaring them.