Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Saxon exile, shriven by Stephen of Hungary,
you tiptoed out of innocence broken
by the Roman God and black
Benedictines - laborare est orare -
work and prayer. In Hungary,
later in England, a sin-starved princess
promised the veil.

Gale-dumped on heathenish Scotland,
the bastard Malcolm - King after Macbeth,
warrior, brigand and much-too-convenient
widower, gathered you (amid poisonous rumours)
to shabby Dunfermline - he would love God
for love of you. Yield a cloister,

gain a throne Margaret. Grand-daughter
of Saint Stephen, grand-niece of Edward
the Confessor - ‘A Perfect Queen’ you rained
alms, ransomed Saxon slaves, spoon-fed orphans,
rebuilt abbeys, buried the wild Celtic soul
under God, gold and granite cathedrals.

Eight times a mother, each babe suckled
the Holy Truth - laborare est orare.
Instruct the ignorant. Reprove the sinner.
Suffer those who are in trouble. Edmund, wasted
with wine, whores and lies, ‘fell away
from the good’. You lost him; lost
young Ethelred to the Gaels; lost

your skin-tight certainty. Empty at forty-six
from fasts, penances and night-vigils
beneath the Black Rood (of the true cross),
you saw Malcolm and your eldest, Edward,
killed by bloody Normands. Alone,
you crawled into that hermit’s cell
inside your heart. Died.

Your private chapel survives on Castle Rock,
stripped of sanctity, doubt, guilt.
Canonized (Please St. Margaret, send
me a husband.) do we doubt God by doubting
you? Woman, Queen, Saint - once you knelt here,
tasted your Catholic God, gave up your soul.
You are now only words, only history, only
an unfashionable kind of love.