The Impresario (part three)

The Impresario

Part Three

Regalus masked moves lithe through the torchlit throng

Pierre the Seer guides her, brusque in the distance he keeps

But cocksure in his speech, his purpose strong

She pities her poor Tortu and her small Dauphin

Like a mother, she has helped to dress and feed them

She cannot tell the number of her years

Nor what the mirroring water in a well

May teach her

Him she loves with a faith implicit

The master who has gone away

But to Regalus her tortured skin is grace

“For in whom will He make his glory manifest?”

The gentle Abbess, once her almoner, had said

“See, child, how the flower will always be…has always been

Our Maker’s Mystery couched in impossibility

Eden within a poppy-seed

Not so large as a grain of sand”

Thus Regalus feels she cannot suffer

Being of all women blessed

And knows one day, when scales are shed

She will sing exaltation

The wax-man is too fat to walk about

Out-bellows the bull in a basso voice

But peals chill harmony, high and deep

While Tortu cradles his lute and plucks

Striking her hip with a tambourine, Regalus dances

While the Dauphin sings

Pierre beats a drum, and a stranger comes to join them

At the fire, bearing a long, stringed box in the shape of

The letter I

She feels an unlooked-for joy

Impresario

Part Four

(2016, Stephanie Foster)