INTERVIEW WITH A LADY-IN-WAITING

INTERVIEW WITH A LADY-IN-WAITING

My life was filled with parties, dancing until dawn.

All those violins practicing the mating flight.

I don’t remember who called him The Great.

My destiny was to be a court songbird,

my art, to preen my feathers in the grand ballrooms.

I learned to smile; the sun rose on his every command.

The water garden at the Summer Palace

offered us a chance to discard our plumage.

So many rooms and floors with inlaid stones

and columns of malachite and gilt.

                                         Yes, the peasants labored,

but we never let that enter our pretty heads. Bread enough.

Of course winters were cold, they’re used to it.

I heard Bonaparte’s army was defeated by our mud.

What did he expect? Winter’s vast empire is Russia.

Once I said Yes to a man, then changed my mind.

Urgent rustle of wheat before the harvest.

I miss his eyes. The eye of the Baltic. The canals.

Afternoon tea in the gazebo. His honeyed arias.

His footprints, ravens in the carrion snow.

5/11/94

I was teaching workshops on interviews with the dead, where we had to get inside their heads and imagine.