His Shield

The pin-swin or spine-swine (the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out,    echidna and echinoderm in distressed-pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine, the rhino with horned snout–    everything is battle-dressed.

Pig-fur won’t do,

I’ll wrap myself in salamander-skin like Presbyter John.    A lizard in the midst of flames, a firebrandthat is life, asbestos-eyed asbestos-eared, with tattooed nap and permanent pig on    the instep; he can withstandfire and won’t drown.

In his unconquerable country of unpompous gusto,    gold was so common none considered it; greedand flattery were unknown.

Though rubies large as tennis- balls conjoined in streams so    that the mountain seemed to bleed,the inextinguishable salamander styled himself but presbyter.

His shield    was his humility.

In Carpasianlinen coat, flanked by his household lion-cubs and sable retinue, he revealed    a formula safer thanan armorer’s: the power of relinquishing what one would keep; that is freedom.

Become dinosaur-    skulled, quilled or salamander-wooled, more ironshodand javelin-dressed than a hedgehog battalion of steel, but be dull.

Don’t be envied or   armed with a measuring rod.