Melancholy conifers command the ridge,
Four weeping queens crying out to Theseus,
"Our husbands lie unburied.
Ravens crowd out the sun".
Four hooded queens, bruise black their dresses
Torn and bloody, trailing in the mire
As they shriek and holla for justice to proud Theseus
When he rides out to his wedding.
Then after the first act the queens depart,
Their wrongs righted,
Their wealth restored,
Their husbands buried deep in homeland clay,
Their enemies routed,
And Theseus, having fought the good fight for them,
Can once more ride out to wed Hippolyta.
And for the next two hours the honest jailers daughter
Goes mad with love for Palamon,
An escaped prisoner in love with Emilea.
He had fought for Creon against the wily Theseus
In the war of the unburied kings.
And the audience is all agog at the jailers daughter,
Forgetting the weeping queens, who started the story
That led to her imagined romance.
I have forgotten to mention Arcite`
And his fall from the bucking horse.
Its the jailers daughter whose candle we tend to carry.
We picture her in our local spilling pints of sadness,
Her voice so loud it blocks all conversation,
But tonight, for some reason, these ageing conifers,
Bent double by the push and pull of the weather,
Remind me that the queens requests for justice
Created yet another pile of corpses.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
28th. November 2022.
A brief synopsis of The Two Noble Kinsmen - plus the conifers.
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