Somewhere above the breaking wet terrain,
a palace stands like statues in the snow,
and in it, walls of oil and shelves of Meissen,
canisters filled with honey, their lids attached
by copper screws, the kind that look like bees
crowding the hive, fond of their quickening Queen.
But this is not the palace of a Queen—
though, yes, she paces here as if to reign
over that quart of milk. She likes to be
around when the cat comes in; she’d love to know
how it is done. How he’s silent, bell attached.
She pours the milk; she pours it in the Meissen.
She pours the milk and starts to let the mice in.
This isn’t how it’s done, I tell my Queen.
And yet she paces, the burgundy attached
to her lips, those emerald-fastened eyes. Terrain
of feeding geese, of seed beneath the snow.
She looks outside to watch her Bartleby
hunt slow through fallen kindling, sleeping bees
inside each tube of winter. I count my sins
and sit alone; I wake the grand piano;
I sit and wait for her, my kindly Queen,
longing to ask her if she’d like to reign
over more of me. The bell of my mouth attached
and as silent. But she did not attach it.
And so she stalks her princely Bartleby,
waiting for his green hour, for it to rain,
for them to go out hunting, catching mice in
their milk-wet mouths. I’ve longed to tell my Queen,
This isn’t how it’s done. And yet the snow
falls on the towers, my failing tremolo.
Do you hear the bell, now shaking, not attached?
The cat is loose and now my wintered Queen
springs to the field to find her Bartleby.
I bend to rinse the dish and shelve the Meissen.
I call to her in tongues too white to reign:
Come, my Queen. I think it’s going to rain.
Your boy and the bees are back, so hear my sins
and know them— Come. The bell is reattached.
