I'm Gawain. They are the drunks.

I'm Gawain. They Are The Drunks.

The fear is not of something new
but "can my mind absorb it?".
I tense like dreams of lost control;
I feel I must avoid it.

Is this where the phobics herd
who'll neither fight nor face it,
and call me rude, a geek or nerd,
if I should try and smite it?

It's black, the assault. With
wrecking assumptions.
I fall and crawl and rip belief;
evil. Not lethal. I clamber;

now I'm on the higher peak;
look down upon that shadowed route.
Peacock faces worry up,
huddle. But I've done it. I know:

I've learnt the new technology,
uncared those sneering weenies.
I turn my back and grin the dawn.
I'm Gawain. They are the drunks.

The Arthurian epic poem "Sir Gawain and the The Green Knight"
was written by an anonymous contemporary of Chaucer.
I came to it via Sir Harrison Birtwhistle's superb opera of the tale.