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- Contents Category: Poetry
- Custom Article Title: Palace Inventory (Partial): Sleeping Beauty
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- Article Title: Palace Inventory (Partial): Sleeping Beauty
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Seven dresses. Of satin, for example, and
crêpe de Chine, tulle, shot-silk, that sort of thing.
Beading and ivory buttons. One with a rip in it.
(The tailor, in interview, remembers the incident –
a sleeve torn on the workfloor; as there were no needles
left to mend it this passes without comment.)
Made before birth for the seven balls
which would have been held in her honour
by the seven suitors, princes from provinces nearby.
Gored by the briars, providence was not on their side.
Ultramarine. We ordered too much. The richest
of canvases, no skimping on her portrait.
Her musk body swathed in that pigment.
The attitude of the Virgin.
Perfumes and rosewater. These stand where we left them,
the latter thick with the scum of a century’s
sleep dust. Clocks unwound, clock faces
empty of hands – these, souvenirs granted
to our waker upon his request. Our witness. The clocks:
great, unticking, black, unblinking eyes.
There is still no time here.
Sheets, clean-pressed and soft and unyellowed,
a century in storage. Hand towels, soap
and candles all familiar and in good supply. We are short
on the remedy for homesickness.
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