Robert Olen Butler
Walter Raleigh, courtier and explorer, beheaded by King James I, 1618
Bess my dear old queen my Elizabeth her lips brittle her body smelling sharply beneath
the clove and cinnamon from her pomander she lies next to me in the dark still
besmocked though the night is warm and she has asked me here at last and I am
masted for her and her bedchamber is black as pitch so she is but a shadow no
torch she cried as I entered upon pain of death and now we are arranged thus
my own nakedness perhaps too quick she says call your new-found land the
place of the virgin, Virginia, to honor my lifelong state and I flinch but her
smock does rise and I find the mouth of her Amazon her long fingers scrawling
upon my back a history of the world oh sir oh sir you have found the city of
gold at last she says, knowing me well this fills my sails the jungles of ancient
lands are mine my queen oh swisser swatter she cries and falls away and I lie
beside her staring into the dark, and I am sated certainly, but the moment calls for
some new thing, and I say wait, my queen and I am out her door to the nearest
torch and I have already prepared the treasure from my new world, this sweet
sotweed this tobacco, and I sail back and slip in beside her and we sit and we
smoke
Robert Olen Butler, Severance: Stories, Chronicle Books, 2006.