“Not Even Cursed” by Alex Harper

I’m not even cursed, not like Cassandra was.

It’s just my bad luck

to see pictures of the future

when the future’s very bleak

for those in power.

And they don’t believe me.

The palace scholars tell me

it’s a common problem,

we all reject views that differ

from the image of the world we hold dear.

So the king who wants to gain the crown

of other kingdoms cannot hear

that his campaign will stall

in the mountain pass, where snow

and ambush will end in his slaughter.

And the queen can’t believe

she won’t see her children

married well as she desires,

but the truth is that the royal plague

is coming, like it did a century ago,

to take the gilded ones.

She thinks it’s a myth,

and the princes and princesses

yawn ostentatiously when I tell them

the number of their days

is shorter than they think.

There’s no joy for me in the truth,

I know the chancellor will hang me

and feed my body to the dogs

when what I’ve predicted comes to pass.

People mix up the teller of the future

with the cause, they’ll say

I was a traitor or brought curses,

but I was loyal,

and the gods have never looked my way.

Only the servants like me, because for them

I see good tidings sometimes,

a love affair will blossom, a baby

will survive, a different king and queen

are coming soon, with a kinder rule.

One day the dogs won’t feed on human meat.

“Thank you,” the servants say

and slip me a small coin

and though I know they need it more than me

I take it — it is part of the exchange

and makes them happy, and me too,

or as happy as I can be.

I envy the seer who comes after me

in better, wiser times,

who’ll be believed whatever they say,

who won’t live in shadowed days, as I do.

It’s getting worse: the pictures are relentless now.

It will be soon.

The golden rats are in the port.

The wind is breeding snow.

Alex Harper‘s poems have appeared in Liminality, Mirror Dance, Not One of Us, and The Interpreter’s House. He lives in England, and can be found online at alexharperwriting.wordpress.com

and on Twitter as @harpertext

.

Published in Kaleidotrope, Winter 2016 | www.kaleidotrope.net