Awakening

From the tilted jug, water began to flow
so that the page could slake his long-held thirst,
the cook sluice onion-grief from her eyes
then slice the trout kept moistly gleaming
in time's aspic. At last, the kettle boiled.
As if to upstage a century of silence,
peacocks screamed theatrically against
emerald backdrops starred with violet
on midnight-blue on bronze — all ferried with
disdain across the ordinariness of lawns.
Wraithlike, a whoosh of steam rose from a hoof
gripped by the blacksmith's leg-of-mutton hand,
the instruments near the forge wobbly,
phantasmagoric, as the horse knew what
heat was again and snorted as iron struck earth.
Instantly, the garden was recolonised
by larks and butterflies, blackbirds, wasps;
fresh seeds floated abroad. Gilt carp sent
messages bubbling through silver-green:
carpe diem… Water lilies sucked slime.
After her long moment of lapsed majesty,
the queen contemplated, over triple
chin folds, the lattice of honey snarled in the lace
of her cinnabar silk bodice — a last
filament looping from her crust-filled mouth.
Bent at an awkward angle floorwards, the king
picked the gold piece from the parquet — alive,
as never before, to its resonant chill,
so that his heart was a flower in high summer.
And now — first checking the treasury door
was locked — he smiled fondly at all his bags full:
his precious children, most loyal subjects,
the twinkle-twinkles in his royal blue sky.
Peacock cries jabbed air as, dreamily,
he caressed the pain in his lower back.
In the topmost room of the tallest tower,
the princess was recalling — hazily at first,
then sharply — that impulsive finger-prick.
Aquamarine eyes opened above
a crimson tear welling from a fingertip.
She bound it with a cloth embroidered with cherries.
Her lips tingled warmly, but her flesh shivered —
a silhouetted form stood, blocking the light!
After he bowed and stepped back, she saw —
like a question mark above his head —
that feathered spire; beneath, blue-green eyes
mirrored her own. She got up, wanting to glimpse
the secret garden inside the palace wall,
and those mist-veiled kingdoms crowding
the window's map. Between, a nightmare hedge
of briars woven with human bones. She screamed! —
vowed to have it cut down, made a bonfire.
Then, turning to her companion: "Tea? —
or perhaps wine?' He had come a long way —
those princely garments torn, earth-stained.
Down they spiralled into the castle's hub.
Time later to savour new silences,
plumb the mystery of bodies flushed to
boiling point then cooling, in an alchemy
of sweat, a radiance of propinquity.