Poet knows

** poet knows **
Trawling through my thoughts
The greatest and emptiness
Space between verbal and not
Ponderings distinctly bright
Or edged in darkest funeral black
When white becomes symbol of terror
Red a placid reminder
Of clothing worn on another day
And how the poet knows
Deep in a poet's soul
Every cryptic segue
All the clues present and past
To those dragons in the dungeons
Knights in rusting armour
The charmers and the blunders
The do it right and truce breakers
Who inhabit the passes between
The words spoken out loud
Events great and proud
And actions less well defined
Hidden and subverted
Removed from common sight
Those moments of ignominy
Of failings fear and blight
Which marked as surely as
Hot branding iron on pale skin
In all these thoughts held
Twisted and in lines meld
To form an epic telling
An emotion deep swelling
Escaped in masked disguise
In words all the truths and all the lies.