Did I Arrange the Flowers.

The Georgians and the Regents... what does that mean to me .
Where am I ... Hidden...?
Murky archives...where am I...?

Victorians...Am I wife in bonnet..?
Shy skirt long and leafy park... buttoned up obedient
Laced shoe and heart with
Sullen silent ringletts weighing
Did I ever speak...or paint or write and sing
Where is my art...my song and dance...where did it go?
No one’s heard of me..
I must have been I alive and said a thing or two...
My words..where are my words..

..did I only polish brass...scrubbed knee and elbow
By the blackened hearth....
My Ming Dynasty a vase I dusted daily
My Alhambra harem full of handsome men... forbidden dream
Was I mere cleaner and arranger of the flowers.
And if I kept a secret diary of lament
Was it lost...as I lay dying..
It and I some trivia of no portent.

...Or buried in a whale-bone corset
Duty ... piety and chaste
Bled pale by births..and needles of embroidery
Dowdy Wedlock weakened ..of feeble education
Withheld within the garden gates
...was I instructed... No ..No and No
Whilst I arranged the flowers?

Edwardia...did I live there ?
Modernity...the Brave New World..
Did I set sail...
Journey East and see the rising sun...
...seek plants..paint ostrich eggs ..ride camels in the desert..
Did I look North...or South...and paint Tahitian Boys?
Did I do that...where are the records now..?
What was I DOING all the while ?

Where is my genius...my seminal discovery
My opera..? Impressions of the Thames
My Eiffel Tower..Taj Mahal ...my Garden in Japan
My pen scribed poetries..the Mona Lisa...was I mere sitter..?
My god damn voice...where is it pray ?
Or did I really just...arrange the flowers ?

Voices fade away...I cannot hear them ..
...the limelight beams away and they remain unlit..
...they’re in oblivia
Their tongues have died and withered in their earthy tombs .
They’re gone but are they lost forever
Will they rise up like vengeful warriors
Flushed cheeks defiant .. lined up behind Athena
Will they say...listen..We did speak...
But walls closed in and fell upon us

Kristine Byrne...5th Dec. 2010

Raheen silenced shut...somewhere to be found ?