So by the degrees of an approach
Whose slow steps crossed a distance not of space
But of a kind more arduous to traverse
I came to what seemed a bed or tomb of stone
Where a knight lay, or his effigy; not dead.
'King Amfortas,' told me some learned voice
Translating being's mystery into a name
That once could call to mind that nameless king deposed
Whom I in grave regions of the mind
Found where he lies lifelong on his bier.
I would have given help, had I known cause or cure
Of the deep ill that laid him on my bed of dream;
Must play what part I did not know, being there.

Then an old woman bowed with griefs and wrongs
Loudly in sorrowful histrionic voice complained and blamed;
I heard her unmoved; when she had said her say
Replied, 'All that you tell is true, but does not signify:
What of his guilt? All human guilt is nothing.'
For it seemed the causes of those ills lay deeper,
Or what she called wrongs were not wrongs at all.
I held my own with the people of dreams, and stood my human ground
Between unknowable cause and unknown outcome
Against that phantom of old wrongs forgotten.

Then it was I in my right hand beheld the sword
Whose diamond blade my weak wrist raised
Had passed through insubstantial dungeon walls,
Light of living light in my dark cave of sleep,
Gift shaped to my receiving, blinding to my blindness.
And on his bed of death the wounded knight
Stirred as with the first wave of an inflowing tide.
Slowly I sheathed that blade in an old scabbard.