Windsor
Four pheasants run across a pale green field.
It’s not the hunting season so they’re sound.
Their jewelled, velvet breasts will not yet yield
To royal guns. True beauty should confound
The barrels and the triggers, but red death
Blasts out from them when autumn comes along
Among the orange and yellow trees. Christ’s breath
Hangs heavy from His cross in chapel song,
But partridges are slaughtered nonetheless.
A grass of frost gives way to river mists
And swans come swaying into view. “Confess
Impurities,” they seem to say to wrists
..Against the shooters’ wooden stocks. The hunt
….Goes on, though. Autumn comes and queens are blunt.