Untitled Document

Jane Seymour

someone
please anyone

what is that noise?
i hear cannon
i hear bells
i hear my drunken Lord bawling

someone
please anyone
what is that stink?

i smell roses
smell rot, the rain in the autumn
and behind it the cloying of old barrelled-pork

someone
please anyone
i am ignored?

by my child
by my King
by everyone in this palace but that woman,
that woman,waxed by the window

she'll listen
she'll tell me
why
i'm suckling a maze?
why i am withering; a pod
after shucking its peas.

she'll listen
she'll tell me
why
i dreamt of my mother, why
she smothered me at birth
for being a girl

someone
please anyone
i can't place her face
her position in my household

i see her clutching at the green sleeves
of her old dancing dress

instead of her attention
she gives me forgiveness

she says i'm not guilty,
not guilty

not right in the head

someone
please anyone
i know that she hates me
she beckons with long fingers for me to go to her
she tells me she's trying, so hard not to haunt me
she says she'll be glad for a sisterly friend
while she waits, she waits for the birth of her son.

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