The Journal Wk. 25
The Mirror and the Light: Vile Blood I
‘And Arthur never came home,’ Jane says, ‘but lies in a tomb at Worcester cathedral, where they left him at dead of winter. And Henry never goes to see him.’
After a moment she says, ‘My lord? You are going to stand there and not speak?’
He says, ‘Why now?’ Cranmer and I believed we had vanquished that spectre: in one winter’s night of persuasion and prayer, refined Arthur into thin air. But it seems Henry withheld something. We took him for the helpless victim of a spirit, rudely appearing. We did not know his shame fetched it.
The Mirror and the Light, 328
Ask for your ghosts, and they come to you
As they were not inclined in life:
One by one, they rise, attend your sleep;
They watch, accuse, and soundless, speak —
Yet the dead will not stay in dreams or graves,
For when you wake they walk with you
And your shame sends for more,
Till your nights have run into your days
And not a self of all the selves you own
Sleeps quiet; about your room they have arrayed
Themselves, your ever-waiting ghosts —
At dawn, their voices clearer than the living.
In the mirror how great you are made,
And how pale your enemies –
In the mirror they kneel at your feet
And murmur, do not look away;
Here confined, we obey.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition:
