Devotees of chess from Age of Chivalry
Played out their Sport to death, its tragic strength.
Those five centuries of classic rivalry
Had reached the periodic magic length,
Whereby measured intervals of history
Accord with the Iceball's known trajectory.

A simple proof of this chronology:
The remnants of the telltale signature
Left by some grave benighted pedagogy,
Sophistic bleats that their one Chess endure,
As if counting angels on head of a pin
Makes the World move or produces its spin.

In rerum natura Pedes transducat--
Chessic Latin fragments not so cryptic--
Non tibi sed ludo et orbi, scac mat!
The falling stars, the comets paths elliptic,
A treasured dinosaur whose every bone
Was scraped and classified and set in stone.

The featured visitation's added layer:
A warning look for all the mortal race,
A sound like furious defiant prayer
The present passage sure to leave a trace;
For a deciphered message came on it --
One or more comets have Earth's name on it.

George William Duke 2001

See also

• Falcon Chess.
• "A CHESS MORALITY: Castle Early". Another poem on Falcon chess.
• A Chess Morality IV: Dialogue. The next poem in this series.