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Dame

In the last days she breathed confidences,

upturned herself, pouring out secrets and stories

into these receptive shells. She called me her rock-

and laughed until the bitterest drops

scorched her cheeks now fading and pallid,  

rouge and lipstick applied in coarse patches;  

curling her limbs round an ivory palace,

nostalgic already for cinders and ashes

and cursing The Fairy Godmother.

“Yes, it’s quite something that trick with the pumpkins,

reptiles and rodents to coach and foot servants,”

but the midnight mutation remained unforgiven.  

“If she’d been acquainted with ways of the ancients

and counted day’s ending from when the sun’s risen,

not held to some fixture that man has appointed

that Prince and myself would have taken occasion

to become more intimately adjoined,

uncovered our conjugal mismatch in time

and stalled the slippery withdrawal and flight.”  

You will quote me on this, for you are of that kind,

“Charm works but a short spell before losing its shine.”

Foreseeing the descent into pantomime

she threw it all up for a headlong decline.

◄ Roll-Up

Erosion ►

Comments

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Ray Miller

Fri 6th Jan 2012 09:30

Thanks for the comments. It's something I've come back to two or three times so it's a bit of a puzzle to me. But certainly Cinderella combined with an aging actress looking back with regret. That's a very nice compliment, Greg.

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Dave Bradley

Thu 5th Jan 2012 20:59

Yes Cinderella in the retirement home. Great poem, Ray - so poignant. Laughter and bitterness in the same line is insightful!

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Greg Freeman

Thu 5th Jan 2012 19:00

Well, I took it as Cinderella in an old folks home, and I think it's one of your best, Ray. Taking that universal romantic theme, and acquainting us with the reality of disillusion. Don't take this the wrong way, but I think it's the kind of thing Carol Ann Duffy might have come up with at one stage in her career. I mean that as a compliment!

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Isobel

Thu 5th Jan 2012 18:49

This isn't an obvious one Ray. The stuff in speech marks doesn't sound like stuff that would come out of anyone's mouth so it's had me puzzling.
It sounds to me like the death bed confessions of an old lady, reminiscing over a love that was never allowed to be - ill timing (that bastard that clobbers us all) stuffing things up for her. The last two lines made me wonder. Perhaps, not being able to have the one she really wanted, she had all the wrong ones instead...

I like the pantomime imagery - it works for me. x

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