The Journal Wk. 30
The Mirror and the Light: Nonsuch
It was years before he realised the boy who went to Smithfield was not the one who came home. The child Thomas still crouched under the stand, vigilant as the dogs, his hands cupped to catch the rain-water, the icy drops on his palm. It is a work he has never undertaken, to go back and retrieve himself. He can see that small figure, at the wrong end of time; he can feel the heave of its ribs as it tries to cry without uttering. He can see and feel, without pitying the child; only suspect that, to keep the streets tidy, someone ought to collect it and send it home.
The Mirror and the Light, 561
The world you knew is dead, and the new world old;
Your end has come before –
You cannot find
the thing you used to be, the words that made your path
a golden road; the book is blank
and proffers only broken charms.
How quick the light that made you
(none so rare, so bright, so pure)
turns to devour, how slowly your reflection fades:
The face that lies, and lies to live
in the mirror, it burns
and only dreams that it is burning.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition:
