I've been watching Season Three of The Tudors, so Anne Boleyn has been on my mind lately. The show's writers did an exquisite job with Anne's last moments. The very last image she sees, just as the sword finds its mark, is brilliant white birds, doves, I think, blurred in flight. Even more poignant is Anne's last memory of her younger self caught up in her father's arms, spinning round in an innocent child's game, a fitting contrast to the fatal game he played with his daughter's life.
Anne's Nightingale
Danna
And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. Anne Boleyn
Despite her prophecy
the sky that early spring morning
was piercing blue and cloudless.
Birdsong punctuated her silence
as she walked her last
to the high scaffold draped
like a monk in voluminous black.
She could not know
its straw-strewn floor secreted
the French sword.
The sun had yet to wick
the dew-laden grass.
She wore an ermine-lined cloak,
grey damask kertel, and crimson martyr
petticoats for her last
royal appearance as Henry's Queen.
Anne addressed her audience,
paid her executioner, knelt,
her resolve to die unshaken,
Swete swete iug iug ,
a nightingale's song,
startled the queen from her prayers.
She searched the sky and found
the nightingale
perched atop a stone cornice,
its clear, sweet song
for her ears alone.
Suddenly, a dazzling white light,
and also, a thin red ribbon
encircling her royal neck.
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