Princesses

Princesses

Those princesses of old with exquisite posture
Drummed into them by stern governesses
Who rapped their backs with a stick if they slouched
Who studied French and ballet in the mornings
And embroidered through the long dull afternoons
Blowing their bangs out of their eyes
With the warm breath men of court kill each other over
Who detested their mothers because in their cold visages
They saw the women they were doomed to become
Who alone could speak sense to their fathers
Who were sometimes brought into his chambers
To soften him when he was in one of his rages
Who sat at their windows dressed for supper
Gazing beyond the castle walls bristling with archers
To the far misty woods where they imagined
The knights they had loved as girls still lived
Not a day older than they had been the day
They picked them up and set them on their knee
Covered in the finest mesh of chain mail
That pools in the palm like gold sand