Rougemont
Fiona Benson

for Temperance Lloyd


Next time I'll walk the old cart route to the drop.
For now it's enough to see the castle walls
grown derelict with trees, and the fosse dammed up
with leaves. The fort's long gone, but the gatehouse
squats on still, red-bricked sentry of the city road.
You were brought through this gate for trial.
Now it's nailed across with a mock portcullis 
and the doves are frightened from the courtyards and towers
by plastic decoys of owls that spin above the ramparts,
and which I take at first for heads.
My heart is a sad swinging in its cage.
You are a thin thought turning over the walls 
in a grey wind, transparent, spider-weight.
I'd have you angry and impenitent and brave.
I'd have you fly from the drop in the shape of a rook,
its rag-and-bone, its bloodshot eye. Instead
you're this palsied old woman in a stained shift
and shawl, your hair thin as carded wool,
huggung your breasts in the cold. On trial
you swore you'd been a cat, that a demon sucked
your private parts, that you pricked and harmed
that man's sick wife. Now you miss the chase
of the Bideford coast but are pleased overall
to be looked at, riding in this cart, when all
your life you've been invisible and walked.