In Pacifica
I despise that portrait of me.
The likeness ends
with the name.
Yes, Jane Seymour, unbeheaded
Queen of England.
No, not of pinched thin lips
and sharp bird-beak nose.
Those hideous wimples
tented on over plucked foreheads
displaying protruding toad eyes....
I was not the smoldering gypsy beauty
of Anne Boleyn
nor the loud, youthful
excess of everything
Katherine Howard
but look what their beauty cost them:
one head apiece.
I was pretty in my watchful, rich-wombed way.
I carried a King in my devoted belly
and a great love for my cousin-husband,
a fondness for estranged young Mary
and a fervent wish for peace.
I carried the scent of my beloved garden
sweet forsythia
nor the harlot’s stink of
Paris and promiscuity.
I was loathe to undergo
a coronation
I did not want to be Queen
and yet here I am,
the only wife to receive a queen’s funeral
and share a tomb
with the Beheader.
Categories:
beheader, history,
Form: Free verse
Descend to join me now in Luna’s sept
Before the summer storm’s pale vision
Disturbs the bed of glory where you slept
And sighed at passing time’s derision!
Arise and sow your wonder over hills
Where free birds can outlast the wingless,
And grass unweaves so gently over rills
Whose timeless flow is quick and listless!
Unending hours advance while tearing off
Astrologers’ ill fancies, deader
Than fragments wrought and torn away by scoff,
Whose broken vows are Hope’s beheader.
All envy shrinks, for you are like the spell
Which thaws cold marble into living
Decay. Descend, illume our moon-beamed dell,
For memories can foil misgiving!
Find my poems and published poetry volumes at www.eton-langford.com
Categories:
beheader, allegory, allusion, death, love,
Form: Rhyme