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