He Wrote To Her A Letter That She Might Know

On the beheading of St. Thomas More under the reign of King Henry VIII

 

 

While fixing my thoughts on February

and snow-feathered boughs of evergreen chain,

I follow the moonlight’s tributary

across a clouded sky that portends rain.

The town is sleeping in the palm of night,

in winter’s malaise and layers of snow,

whose basket is brimming with fluffs of white

where dark shadows fall and fire flickers glow.

 

Dreams are echoed in the valley of sleep,

twilight tangled in a glittering swirl;

and soaked in memory, the passions keep

as the nacre of the moon or a pearl.

I listen in silence and sip the sound

softly flaking off the lips of the sky

that fall in a hush upon sacred ground

of yesteryears and the times now gone by.

 

The past glides over the whispering stones,

in the moonlight pulse of a woman’s wrist,

whose passion bleeds into the ghost of bones

that arise in a white sarong of mist.

Others see her and think nothing of it

as she drifts up and down the Roper aisle.

The wind murmurs, "Margaret, Margaret;"

and there are tears imbedded in her smile.

 

She has waited all these long, lonely years

with her eyes toward Saint Peter in chains.

Her father’s last words in a backwash of tears,

his mortal assembly yet there remains.

She lovingly strokes the top of his head.

His sweet face she kissed that day in July!

His charcoal letter, she read and re-read

and read it once more before she did die.

 

London Bridge crumbles into River Thames,

into the blue mood of reflective steel.

The crown is tarnished and bereaved of gems

with each head that sharpens against the wheel.

Poor Thomas can no longer touch his brow.

He cannot lay his head down for a nap.

As snow cloaks Canterbury and each bough,

his head lies smiling in Margaret’s lap.

 

 

Author's Note

This poem is about St. Thomas More, who was beheaded on July 6, 1535, for refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as the head of the church of England.

His body was given to his family, and laid in the tomb he had already prepared in Chelsea Church; but the head was set up on a pole on London Bridge. His daughter Margaret owned that she had taken away and cherished the head of the man whom they had slain as a traitor. She caused it to be embalmed, kept it with her wherever she went, and when, nine years afterwards, she died (in the year 1544), it was laid in her coffin in the "Roper aisle" of St. Dunstan's Church, at Canterbury.

Reviews

[Glen Yumang Manese]

This was a intriguing read of a write...and the caption in your Author's note better clarifies the story line...Often do we forget the vindication of what we believe to be true...and what a King deems is sovereign right of passage...no King governs the Church and to give one's life to the ideology of faith echoes after the fact of what is right and wrong...