This poem is taken from PN Review 147, Volume 29 Number 1, September - October 2002.
The Wemyss School of Needlework1. Patterns
The castle has turned its back,
closed on itself, a cold
stone bud with roots in coal.
In the lodge, miners' daughters
wore scalloped aprons, sleeve-protectors.
Hands were scrubbed, hands
at all times were to be clean.
They shook cloth on to trestles,
laying swathes of paper, stamped
with pomegranates, thistles;
hearing, perhaps,
as fingers smoothed out creases,
the faintest whisper of
fleur-de-lys; a dead
queen's handwork
...
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