Poem: Any Prince to Any Princess

Any prince to any princess
by Adri­an Henri

August is coming
and the goose, I’m afraid,
is get­ting fat.
There have been
no gold­en eggs for some months now.
Straw has fall­en well below mar­ket price
despite my fran­tic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you right­ly point out,
withered.

I can’t imag­ine how the pea
got under your mat­tress. I apologize
humbly. The cham­ber­maid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I under­stand that, dur­ing my recent fact-find­ing tour of the Gold­en River,
despite your night­ly unavail­ing efforts,
he remained obsti­nate­ly froggish.

I hope that the Three Wish­es grant­ed by the Gen­er­al Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfor­tu­nate recent sequence of events.
The fall in out­put from the shoe-fac­to­ry, for example:
no one could have fore­seen the work-to-rule
by the Nation­al Union of Elves. Not to men­tion the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.

The mat­ter of the poi­soned apple has been tak­en up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the inci­dent will not be repeated.

I can quite under­stand, in the circumstances,
your reluc­tance to let down
your gold­en tress­es. However
I feel I must point out
that the weath­er isn’t get­ting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from wait­ing at the base
of the White Tow­er. You must see
the absur­di­ty of the situation.
Some of the courtiers are begin­ning to talk,
not to men­tion the hum­ble villagers.
It’s been three weeks now, and not even a word.

Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our emp­ty palace.
Dead leaves lit­ter the bedchamber;
the mir­ror on the wall has­n’t said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bear­ing all this in mind,
that you think again,

let down your hair,

recon­sid­er.