When the king died
his daughter married a mailman
no, not the man who brought letters,
for that they had spies those days,
no, but the man
who made the coat of armor.
Everyone in the town wondered
“What could the princess want with the armorer?”
Yes, I also found it strange,
but kept quiet as I still had my hopes.
No one knew if they loved each other before,
even if they did they could have always done so
without getting married and all that,
and one even said wasn’t it the best way to kill love
if they had any for each other?
When the feasts were over
we had forty years of peace,
the mailman quietly ruled by the side of his wife
and new princes and princesses were born.
Talk had died long before, though the town had
lost its nobility, and the royals their stamp,
but we still paid the tithes, and still struck the same coins.
One day, I attended the young prince
on his hunt, and we came upon a wonderful
beautiful girl in the forest, from nowhere as if
drinking a mouthful of water from
a stream gurgling nearby, and everything
was as in fairy tales except for a full moon.
They met, they laughed, exchanged tales
and then they often met, often with my aid,
in secrecy, loving it more than each other.
Then the prince was called to university
and books spoilt him, he forgot her
and was soon lost in world that we
had always wondered about. He never came back.
I remember her strange choice, she married a printer.
Ankur Agarwal is an independent publishing professional, involved in copy editing of STM as well as humanities books for several publishers as a freelance. Besides hating his job, he loves traveling, practicing his French, playing sheepshead, and writing poetry. He reviews European cinema for DearCinema and blogs here.
© 2009, Ankur Agarwal
Halfway Down the Stairs 