Poetry

I've been going through the stuff that didn't make it into Dust Radio, trying to figure out whether any of it is worth fitting up and sending out...and, well, not a lot of it, IMHO.;) Some of it's pretty old, anyhow. So--perhaps because of that realization--today, I wrote a new one. (And why yes, agincourtgirl, it is partially based on The Affair of the Poisons. So thanks!

Without further ado:

THE GLASS MASK


"One should never annoy anybody; if Sainte-Croix had not been put in the Bastile, perhaps nothing would have happened."
—Mme Gobelin, la Marquise de Brinvilliers.


Marie-Madeleine, small and fine,
Has two names, two faces.
She drives all the way to Paris at top speed
To retrieve her lover Gaudin’s little box—
So full of secrets!
She is determined: Just as
No mere lettre de cachet could ever keep
Them separate, back when she wanted him more
Than her husband, family, honorable name,
No ribbon-tied wad of unwary correspondence
Will ever make her his widow.


Sainte-Croix, that jumped-up bastard,
Proclaimed heir of Exili, who himself said
He stole the Borgias’ spice-rack. Rumour has it,
Sainte-Croix didn’t see the fatal fissure until
The fumes had already limned it—breathing deep,
Too fast to stop. Dead before he hit the floor
Of his laboratory, shattered mask a sudden
Second skin:
Red-clear-red, fit to greet the gendarmes
When they broke in, alerted by his neighbours.


But bribery does Marie-Madeleine no favours here,
Useless as her most vitriolic harangues.
The box is opened,
Lets loose a flood—a little
Reddish water, deadly yet obscure, in the belly
Of some poor alley-cat. Can this really be
Glaser’s famous Swiss Receipt?
The pure white powder which gives
Power of life and death
Over any and all irritants?


A tablespoon, and you’re doomed;
A glass of milk, and you’re saved…
For now. Murmuring, under her sweetened breath:
Today, I do not care to kill you;
I lay you down, contemptuously, like a hand
I see no reason to bet on. And so
You live, until it pleases me better that you
Do not.


Now, thank me.


Does she foresee the funnel in her future?
The trestle? Certainly,
She will miss that little white powder
When she makes her obeisances before Notre-Dame de Paris,
Barefoot and shorn.
When she swallows pins and bits of glass,
Thrusts a sharp stick (guess where!)—
Perhaps she means to point out
The hole inside her,
That empty place her brothers made
When she was seven years old.


Or maybe this, too, is a lie,
A dream: Fantasy, extravagance,
Feverish deliriums and reveries.
Her life a puffed cake full of sickness, a hollow treat
Lived on the outskirts,
In the shadow of the Sun King’s court.


(They will have a similar rash of deaths to deal with,
soon enough—the Burning Chamber kept busy by
These scandalous bitches who dare
To think that they can outlive their husbands,
With impunity, kill their babies,
Run their lives without help from any man.
Only the white powder,
Plus prayers said to a Golden Calf with Satan’s horns
On the altar of their own bellies.)


Marie-Madeleine, in her penitent’s robes,
Had already admitted three murders
When they put her to the question;
All the men of her family.
Twenty pints of water are not sufficient
To put out the flames inside her. And after
Her small body is rendered ash, set adrift in the wind,
As Mme de Sevignie jokes to her daughter—
We may yet breathe her in, be taken
By some mood for poisoning that will
Surprise us all.


For Sainte-Croix’s box stands open,
The glass mask broken. We cannot yet
Call back the thought
Which promises, for the right price, we can
Do away with anyone
Who disagrees with us.


And for no other reason.