The poisoned apple touched her lips
as it did Eve's. She slept she sleep of death,
till wakened by the prince. She rode off with him,
Behind her, she left elves, stirring white embers,
their own white hair growing whiter,
elves singing incantations,
sadly, and the soft licks of red flame,
and elves again, waiting for trees
to bloom once more across the bare fields,
the old ones cut back one summer
to make way for the prince's horses,
the summer the prince left for the wars.
Ah, but they say that sometimes you can hear still horses' hooves
echoing on the bare fields.
And the prince's wife waits too, in a high tower;
she grows older, talks to a mirror, to walls,
fingers her long strands of hair as the moonrise is caught in thorny thickets--
does it seem whiter now?
And the mirror answers, tells her
of another, sleeping still, beyond the palace walls.
Has the battle gotten nearer now? Or is it her own shriek of terror
that she hears across the fields? In the clearing,
flowers bud, and the elves, hair white like hers, are singing
that it may be witches' scheming,
for the mirror holds more than the walls:
it holds the princess, the moon, the night,
holds everything, the generations caught in it,
the dead, sleeping, or dreaming,
and the moon's white fingers playing,
playing upon infinity, reflections in her mirror.
Gainesville, FL; Fall, 1981; revised Valdosta, GA; August, 2009; Tallahassee, FL, October, 2009
This is something of a 'feminist analysis' of the fairy tale, "Snow White," I suppose. It was in part inspired by my early playing with two mirrors, where one mirror was reflected in the other--I used to try to count the images, wondered if I'd come to an end (because an infinite number of images might not get in there right away because of the speed of light), try to look at myself in the more tiny images to see if I could see myself back in time, and wonder if the images would tile infinitely. However, in a discussion with the poet Richard Pevear (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pevear, one of my college writing teachers, I discussed the differences and relationship between myth and legend (fiary tales are considered to be legends); legends give hope because at the end they offer a way out whereas myth is cyclical. Here at last I've taken a legend, that of Snow White, and turned it into a myth, something that repulses me a bit because I love escape (though I hope that there is some lightness in the playfulness of the moon, and of course there is hope in the sense that future generations are born, and finally the heroine may have power because it is her mirror -- or she may not, for the mirror may be the more powerful -- I leave this open).