*On August 9th 1914, British troops departed to Germany for WWI. By the end of the barbaric war, 3-4 million women were estimated to have been widowed.
Baby August has told her first untruth.
Buds bloom no more to meet a genial world.
The widow seizes all the pendant flowers
with which she sought to bid her spouse farewell.
An ave before he was enmeshed in war.
Candles alive to witness one more love
have danced themselves to death and killed their flame.
She cannot rid her coverlet of wrinkles.
She cannot clasp a glass of wine without
scowling askance at its momentous shade.
She distrusts the cup; trusts more in malaise,
distrusts the very fairness of her skin.
She finds her pallor does not need her hug
to blanch her husband; fear can do as much.
Azures darken with the smoke of chimneys
whilst vaguely through an open door, she hears
her curtains, bandying with winds of fate.
He breathes, he breathes—can she be widowed thus?
She strips her newly funereal bed,
dethroning love through taking down his roses.
Yet neglecting some petals on her sheets
which mourned their king’s expulsion when—
having washed them too—mistakenly—they
tinged her covers in a cruel crimson.
Then when she made some play of them in hand
the reddest of the petals poured their flush.
Purpled sinks, bloodied hands but—of whose blood?
She has read her husband’s fate upon their walls.
Interpreting the muteness of her home
and wordless corridors as signs to know,
that though he breathes—she is a widow.
