Robert Finch's "Aubusson Castle, July 14, 1960"

In this embrasured window troubadours
laughed as the sun came laughing up from the river,
gazed through the arras of rain at its hidden weaver,
lived, longed, loved, lost, and sang what the heart stores.

Nightingales sang, too, in the leafy keep,
while horn and drum led time about the valleys
that guard this central rock whose kind portcullis
called poet and pen to waken dreams from sleep.

Now, in the dimming twilight of below,
bugles explode, rockets eclipse the stars,
commemorating a war to vanquish wars,
announcing the battle of song, due long ago.

Of the castle, only this one window remains.
Nightingales try the troubadours' refrains.