Hunt Of The Frail Stag And Unicorn Poem by gershon hepner

Hunted like a stag that's frail
when we get old and start to fail,
we are pursued by pain and doubt
and care and trouble, driven out
of hearth and home, to places where
we'll end our lives, a board an care
perhaps today, but not when men
still hunted ailing stags, for then
old age did not look as forlorn
as, trapped by love, the unicorn
whose tapestries today adorn
the Cloisters. Like a faun,
cette après-midi in New Jersey
I rest, and offer a great merci
to daughter Abigail and son-
in-law the architect who've done
me proud, with Linda, who's the doe
so dear to me she may not know
how much she has enabled me
to weave my lifelong tapestry,
intriguing and tormented tale
which, till I ail, I hope won't fail
to stir her heart, though she may scorn
the fable of the unicorn,
and think that I’m no failing stag
because I've tales like this to wag.

Inspired, during a visit to the Cloisters in Manhattan, but a South Nederland tapestry (1505-1525) called 'Hunt of the Frail Stag, ' hanging next to the famous tapestries of the Unicorn.

11/20/08