At the edge of the village roofed with mossy
slate, stood a hermitage, an embassy, and 
a palace. Being spent, we chose to enter 

the palace, a very busy place. Messy as we
were, we were treated like royals,
Class E, which entailed the following 

advantages: Being served muesli in vintage 
glasses, being assuaged that the King’s 
boozy rhetoric would not become policy, 

and three, having the opportunity to bless 
the day’s carnage in homage to the deceased
Queen. Such delicacies! For our wages,

we were pinned with corsages dense with 
glossy leaves, which became permanent
appendages. A page waved to indicate

that it was time to go to the embassy, 
where nothing memorable happened. Then 
it was on to the hermitage, the last stage, 

where we would presage the image of ecstasy
and thus emboss our legacies. We pledged
to finesse the fallacy of hedge and spillage

and erase the badge of unease around certain
engagements. We gauged our audience and the time.
We lost our accents and flimsy excuses in a gorgeous 

cortège. We learnt to parse our emphases. 
We became quite adept. In the distance, always
the glass sea breaking. It was our time to savage.