#18 - The Girl in the Fireplace

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (1721 - 1764) - Marquise de Pompadour

The clock is broken, embers crack and hiss,

no language can interpret what occurs ‒

she gives a lonely traveller one last kiss,

then steps into a future that's not hers.

The war is endless, internecine strife,

nobility's outsider at its heart ‒

a friend of kings, but not a kingdom's wife,

a patron and practitioner of art.

The bells are silent, rain falls like a shroud

as Voltaire muses on inequity

which wears away at beauty, drip by drip.

The grief of kings is rarely sung aloud,

the deluge whispers as it meets the sea ‒

"she will not have good weather for her trip."

RJT

#16 - All Saints' Day

"We know that everything is for the best

in this, the best of all possible worlds.

The Lord's perfect creation has unfurled ‒

evil exists to put us to the test."

Voltaire just laughs ‒ "My friend, you surely jest!

The fractured earth, the boiling seas that hurled

their rage upon this European pearl

disprove the 'Optimism' you've expressed."

Through Lisbon's broken bones and tumbling spires ‒

a devastation none can understand ‒

through bedlam, flood and all-consuming fires,

Herr Leibniz strolls with Pangloss, hand in hand,

to seek the views of those still left alive

on All Saints' Day in seventeen fifty-five.

RJT