Her Life Is On This Table and Other Poems
Page 3
saw her revive!
It was wondrous and joyous; and yet I fear
she’s lost to us still. Oh my brother!
Her heart goes with him as they ride.”
A few months passed, and then we heard
that the Prince wed the lady he’d found.
Though naught she remembered of her name or past,
and none was found
who could say a word
about her; yet her prince was bound
by the love that her beauty within him had stirred,
to make her his princess at last.
And her love about him she wound.
The Black Queen’s plots ’gainst Myranda had ceased,
while she lay insensate as stone.
She’d long ago claimed her step-daughter had died
while riding alone.
The Queen’s fame increased
for a beauty no longer outshone.
But if word of a fairer princess fouled her feast,
would some deadly plot now be tried,
like the apple she’d used, or the comb?
We lured her by sending someone to tell
how they’d seen the prince’s new bride
at our cot; then she’d guess who her rival must be—
the apple she’d tried
had failed in its spell—
oh, she’d come, urged on by her pride,
to fool a girl she knew well.
But this time the Queen would be met by me,
and my brothers, who knew how to hide.
I had her turn round as she entered our cot
in her guise as a baker of bread.
Suspicions aroused, both her hands made a sign
and some words were said;
but her magic was naught,
for my brothers emerged and her head
was struck by a blow from a pickaxe, but not
a fatal one. Then to our mine
we carried her while her scalp bled.
Down tunnels by light which dwarves alone see,
down a long and deep dark twisting way,
we hauled her, then fitted her with iron shoes.
In darkness she’ll stay,
where lost will be
that beauty she pampered each day.
Some water she’ll find, pooling down by her knee,
if ever her cold heart should lose
its conceit, and she kneel down to pray.
And that she once soaked in her poisonous draught—
the apple bite which I had found
in Myranda’s sweet mouth as she lay in the glen
I left underground
with the Queen in the shaft,
and no other morsel around.
When the hunger of peasants at which she once laughed
gnaws her belly and drives her mad, then
will she eat it, or know her own craft?
So Myranda is safe; and I heard from someone
how the birth of a son went all right.
I feel much contented it’s all gone this way.
Out of her plight
a prince’s love won,
and she warms his bed every night
with a love that brought summer and stars to cold hearts;
yet seeking a name he could say,
that dullard prince called her Snow White.
April 18, 2013
Countering Oblivion