Then...
Here, upon this flagstone,
Through yonder portcullis,
And over the green pasture inside the castle gates,
Yea, ‘twas a time of kings,
A time of high adventure
and death’s flying arrows,
Peasants, horses, carts,
Children plucking chickens,
The noise, the dust, the heat,
This was the place,
This was the dungeon where they took
The Hooded Man,
To Nottingham’s dark cellared cells,
Over across the castle moat,
by the river green,
there grows the pride of Sherwood,
In that time of chivalry
there was honour to be won
and the comely maidens flowed with
the milk of beauty,
Modesty was theirs,
and respect too,
Dressed in garments ruby red with rare silken cloths
brought back from the Crusader Kingdoms so far away
over the waves of desert sands,
Lush velvet embroidered with the lace of the East,
This was the age of Faerie and Legend,
Nottingham’s merrie minstrels plucked gently their mandolins,
Hear this, the blissful sound of a bygone age,
An age of mist and dreams...
Now...
The skull eyed reaper marches ever onwards,
Time slashes forward without mercy...
Look you now to these ancient castle ruins,
Nothing now but cracked stones,
The old flagstones are lined with
the attack of ages,
The walls of the courtyard grimed with ivy
and rotting flowers with dead dry thorns,
Over there, the portcullis, it has been removed,
There is no more music here,
There is only the croaking silence of autumn’s solitary raven,
Robin, The Hooded Man, is now nothing more than a mute statue,
He keeps ghostly guard over his domain,
His last arrow poised for to fire
to a place where he was to be laid to final rest,
His famed silver arrow has now turned to gold
for there at the steps of the old castle
is a maiden fair and bold,
There she stands dressed in nothing
more than gold,
From head to toe,
Gold,
From back to front,
Gold,
From North to true South,
Gold,
She bares all in
Gold,
The early evening twilight catches fire
and her hair is ablaze with the rays of the fading sun,
Her body twists and curls like a panther newly released into an emerald jungle,
Gold glows and ripples over her supple curves,
She stands on tiptoes, arches back and smiles
to the sea of cameras that *click! and clack!,
The Union Jack flag she drapes coyly over her shoulder
and to the camera she blinks and wickedly winks,
Her ravenous teeth glinting sharply in the twilight,
Modesty?
There was none,
Freedom?
There was none,
Equality?
There was none,
Humiliation?
Aplenty!
Maybe not on the outside
where her youthful skin twinkled
and jousted with the sun’s light,
No, the shame was all circled up inside her,
For all along the barricades along the castle bridge
thronged men,
Their whistling tongues salivating,
Their eyes crawling over her golden skin like an army of Crusader ants,
Her beauty by these leering men prickled and probed,
Their minds raging with rabid images of twisted lust,
This living work of art,
This statue of pure molten gold which moves,
She is but a thing which men will put on a pedestal and objectify,
They will point to her and pontificate,
They will say this and say that,
They will touch her
and mould her
and hold her
until she whispers her last
and grows marble cold.
Maybe, in time, she will be silenced forevermore,
and,
like the Hooded sentinel who stands watch outside the gates,
She will be cast in burning bronze
and stand immobile for all time,
A daughter,
A sister,
A mother...
Now,
A prisoner...
Always*,
A prisoner...
That burnished gold has no meaning if it be nothing but chains,
The cruel chains of Mankind’s eternal slavery of Womankind.
Here ends the tragedy
of the Golden Girl.*
©Rangzeb Hussain
This work was inspired by the sight that met my eyes as I left Nottingham Castle. Outside the gates of the ancient castle stood a girl dressed in nothing but gold paint. Cameras, lights, action...