Here are the vipers that must be fed
And here the lords to be put to bed
Faster and faster, your mind leaps ahead
To some book that contains the count of the dead.
Slowly the year turns, again hawks fly
Given the queen sells, who would buy?
Gentle hands have no need of string,
So go out fishing for the king;
Thus busied, wait for better years
Which come, in time, with better fears.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition: