The footsteps of your forgotten dead
Return to you at this time,
Of nights you hear them on the stairs
Of days, no sound at all.
Eyes now living the crows will have
Those birds you made to come
Across the flat and weary plains; the time is near
To eat and to be eaten; gather up your threads
Which tell of pride and sordid falls –
It is said the king is seen
Not alone, in the garden, sans his queen.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition: