Watching my child
command
a stage of soldiers and
servants, of courtiers and supplicants, I can
believe that she’s
Empress
of all the Russias,
fluent in every
European tongue, ready
at a shot to trade her
mantle for
a Hussar’s uniform,
carrying herself as straight as a ruler,
as the stick
she threatens to have
the disagreeable and disobedient beaten with.
She wears on her feet,
at fifteen, her first
heels, manages without misstep despite
the gown that trails the
floor the heavy, jewel-encrusted train.
At home she complains
about how ridiculous
she feels. In the last
scene, the stiff English
captain whose heart, in
the end,
she has not captured
because he has no heart,
presumes
to give the Queen
bachelor’s advice:
Marry, he says,
the price of children
who, when young, will settle around your knees
on winter nights like
these, then comfort you
in your decline. And I
do
take comfort here,
watching her,
despite the unpleasant
fact that, anxious for empire,
she will leave, leaving
behind her subjects who grieve,
who seek their consolation in philosophy.