A woman reading.  As usually shown,
her hair tidy, her dress so ordinary and clean
as not to matter. Her stillness
fending off a frown. Light on the page.
Beside her, half in shade, a fine brindled cat.
 
She wrestles her eyes to focus on the picture,
the colour swims and blends until she gets it right:
Charles the Second in his high heels,
shiny silk stockings, the wig and all – how many
servants did it take to get him ready in the morning?
 
and yet he seems less remote than the cat beside her
if she runs her fingers through the warm fur, searching,
counting the vertebrae, finding the warm blood which
even in extremity we share, even
when all that’s left is the bony load and the need
 
for company, play, help.  The cat stretches
from tail tip to claws and jumps away
nonchalant as a monarch into the night, into
that deep prehistory where cloudy forms take shape,
just as the traveller gazes down
 
on a place claimed, on a language he will never learn.
So, can the reader negotiate between them,
a currency, common ceremonies of hunger and thirst,
birth, murder and insomnia, or only if
she belongs to an era before the dial and switch,
 
trusting the shaken flame, the grey and red of embers,
reliant on the practised ear, on the spike that comes out clean,
touch-taught, as the cat comes home
no better informed? though it’s her mandate,
her one thing to keep safe, the message entrusted
 
in the first instant of her life, and never since then explained.