Courtly Forlorn

Courtly Forlorn

The palace is calm, too calm for comfort.
The Queen has said she wants to be alone.
The King is thoughtful, much more than usual.
He has no time for his jester’s joking.
The birds in the cage don’t feel like singing.
He frets and sighs and sends his fool away.

At first he thought that the Queen was joking
And didn’t see anything unusual
When she told the jester to stop singing
And threw her favourite handkerchief away.
He had no sense of her plain discomfort
And so it was just hers and hers alone.

He’d like her to be relaxed as usual
But for the life of him can’t find a way
To offer her any sort of comfort.
He misses her soft, melodic singing
He sometimes overhears when they’re alone.
But he can’t help. No, you must be joking.

The King spends long anxious evenings alone
With only memories of birds singing.
There must be reasons to explain away
The cause of the Queen’s chronic discomfort.
She has become a stranger to joking.
The circumstances are most unusual.

The Queen has seemed to be so faraway
With the sad King unable to comfort
Her and he knows that his futile joking
Is inappropriate. But she’s alone
Inside her melancholy. The usual
Endearments are missing. No-one’s singing.

But one day he thinks he hears her faint singing
And, though it still seems too soon for joking,
He thinks he ought to spend some time alone
With the Queen, as used to be quite usual,
And yet again sends the jester away
And the Queen comes to the King for comfort.