She stands there by the open window,
its mornings gray that lights her face.
her curls are long and fair and golden,
dulled by the light of the cold winters
morning; truthful in its stark demean.
Her face is pale and fair and lovely;
dark shadows circle her eyes, and her
eyes are gray, cold as the dawn, as they
watch the procession of men down the
road; in black are they robed, and their
cowls are dark. Her figure is lovely, or
was lovely, once; angles there are, and her lines
are hard and stark and sharp. Tall she stands
in the wasteful light, her pride a mantle, to
hold back the tide. Dressed in a sheet of
shimmering gray, almost she would blend into
the grey dawning morn, were it not for her hair,
though lackluster and shorn; longer it was in
summers fair past, till she cut it with shears and
shivers and hate. The cowled procession slows
to a stop, before a man and a pit and a naked tree.
He speaks in a voice of resonance and power; not
a tear is shed in that makeshift bower, not a tear,
not a whisper, not a head bowed in grief, for the
man they had carried. They spared him no pity; he
had shown none in life. The woman watches from
the empty tower, no tears shed there in her ancient
bower. Cold she stands in the cold morning grey,
robed in power and pride, and great beauty, past.
She watches as they lower her dead lord inside, no
coffin, he; too many had he broken. She watches
in silence, in pain, and in pride, foolish though it be
in the grey mornings light. Dirt over him. Dirt under.
A paupers grave, in a field, in winter. No honor in death;
he had had none in life. Last shovelful thrown; the ground
is smoothed over. The priest and his men leave the grey field
empty, save a tree in the center, stark in death.
she watches, and remembers, and falls in her folly, in her cold,
prideful folly, to join him in death, who had murdered her love.
To join him, though he it was who had murdered her love, and her joy and her dreams, and her young, laughing beauty. Fallen she, through prideful
folly.