Dinner at Elsinore

By Ewan

Fri, 26 Feb 2016
  • 562 reads
2 comments
 

The room is lit with tallow fat

and the shadows whisper like thieves,

like the leaves in autumn, circumflant,

in the slashes of ladies' sleeves.

 

The food is served in platters high

while the servants snicker and sneer

at the fools in motley circumvest

where the princeling wallows in beer.

 

The king is dead from kindred's knife

and the traitors cackle like crows,

as the monks in cloisters circumvect

what the coffers have long enclosed.

 

The mead is drunk from jewelled cups

and the salvers are stained with piss.

Do the nobles in stupor circumspect

know the castle has come to this?

 

 

 

 

Certificate U
Poem
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by Bee on

Perfect rhyme and metre. I liked the use of the suitably archaic voice, and slight inversion here and there, which added to a medieval atmosphere. Would be good hear it read aloud. 

Bee

Submitted by Ewan on

Haven't read a poem to camera or live for years... don't know when, or if, I'll do it again. I think metred, rhymed poetry is a performance art though, it's what connects us to bards and troubadours in the town squares of York or Hameln.

Thanks for reading.

regards

Ewan

Author Page at the 'Zon