If what I say is true,
True am I
Yet if I speak not truth,
Still true
To that which I have pledged my truth,
My troth, my lying mouth, and half my soul.
***
To my lady, who sits behind the door
I’ll smile, and bow, and speak the truth no more.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition: