Regina - Rosemary Mitchell

 

Alas! Regina, my love, my wife, my queen!

You had a Celtic name I could not say

when first I purchased you, amid

the soft southern hills of this far-spread

Britannia. The Syrian girls I knew, dark-haired,

with eyes like glistening olives, were dusky-fair

pillars in Palmyra. You paled beside them.

But your storm-green eyes, changing like

northern seas, the angular jut

of your chin, a dauntless cliff, and the

uncertain shades in the forests of

your hair enchanted me. You had no words

I recognised, but there was a hard and salty

magic in your voice. Bride in this flowery desert

of the north, my slave commanded me, being queenly.

A perfect pearl which the diver finds

only once beneath the wave in a watery

lifetime. We came north to this wall,

for business sake – I being a banner-maker

to the Emperor’s army. These rigid Romans still

yearn for dominion, planting their flags and feet

in all the world’s wild corners. These lands tripped them up,

of course. This is an ever-shifting space

of winding streams, misty moors, and wild woods.

A land like you, my love: untamed.

To discipline this puzzling place, these soldiers built

a wall, on which I freed you, saw you fly

like a falcon rising in the winds. It’s where I wed you,

too, and watched you die, slow gasping in your pain.

And now a Roman-handed sculptor tries to fix your image

on your tomb. I said to him – this slave was my Zenobia,

more conquering than the sun, and pale, mysterious

as the moon. Shape her here in stone for evertime.

 

He makes you now a prim Roman matron, spinning wool

and showing your jewel box with a smirk of pride.

By the gods of your strange land, this is not you!

You were your own jewel, and mine too; and to

my poor southern limbs, chilled by winter winds,

you were as warm as a woollen cloak. When the mason

is gone, I will smite away this simpering stone face,

and restore some jot, a qal, of unmasked you.

 

 

 

Patricia - Hannah Stone

 

When you’re a ninety-two year old Byzantinist,  

the conference comes to you.

On a snowy evening, after the speeches,

I place a glass of red into trembling fingers,

and hold pretzels in a napkin

for you to peck at between anecdotes,

blowing crumbs at me as I bend my ear to your tale.

 

Sixty years of conference wool on your back,

you’re no longer upright,

but your gaze is straight as an arrow,

and your eyes bright, now with fun,

as we agree being naughty is wasted on the young,

now with tears for your long gone husband.

 

An attendant daughter suggests I circulate,

but I’m hooked, swapping stories about Brussels,

(mine circa 1973, yours post-war),

and the joy of bearing children – and then it’s time to part,

and I press a kiss onto the soft crenulations of your cheek.

Your history warms me as I pick a route

back over the crusted ice of a reluctant spring.