Eric Brooks

Long is the night of my queen’s bold whispers.
Strange are the stories she tells to the dead.
Soft are the steps of her padded slippers.
Heavy is my heart, sunk fast like lead.
 
Come and hide with me in the servant’s quarters.
Hidden, we shall sleep underneath the sink.
At midnight pass beyond the kitchen’s borders,
watching from the shadows, she shall help us think.
 
Witness the dead on their devilish errands;
Overhear her telling of our castle’s tales.
Is she speaking ill of bishops and barons?
Will she free the beasts dying in our jails?
 
She speaks of ages no one else remembers,
Of nations fallen and their names erased,
Of kitchen and court and of all their members,
The least bears mention and his deeds are traced.
 
Joyful is her witchy conversation,
Strange her control on the hearts of men.
I fear her lively, pleasant condemnation
On all that is or ever will have been.
 
Up from the shadows, Oh my silly spies,
Come and hear our discourse openly.
Not by the craft of the Book of Lies
Do I speak so soft and politely,
 
But by a power that in naming I kneel,
Who knows shadows are naught but an absence of light.
Our discourse here is under no seal,
Though it must remain hidden from the sires of blight.
 
Then in the startling evening daylight
We witnessed white robes and fresh fallen leaves.
My heart still heavy, I knew that I must fight
Either for the evening or its tongue-tied thieves.