Her Life Is On This Table and Other Poems Read online

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