The Sealskin Cloak (Bordens Ruse?)
In the scorching heat of a still-morning day
The Mayflower burns under an angry sun
and the Paxton yearns for the skies to quench its thirst.
Inside the ninety-two second;
So silent, so still.
Inside the ninety-two second;
So silent, so still.
Alas, a deafening roar inside doth fill.
“Maggie, come down!”
The young Lizzie cries out -
“Come down quick! Fathers dead!”
“Somebody’s come in and killed him!”
Fleet of foot, down the stairs,
Maggie rushes for help,
Fleet of foot, not a thought for herself.
This days renown has but yet begun.
On the mohair-covered davenport
Lizzie’s dead father remains reclined,
With no life left in his elderly eyes.
Upstairs, step motherly slain,
Mrs Borden lies on her own guestroom floor.
The handle-less hatchet
in ashes enshrouded
Poor young Miss Lizzie,
Her innocence is doubted.
What of the prussic acid?
To clean a soiled sealskin cloak?
The burning of the dress?
Stained by paint was her steadfast oath.
The evening table meal
Lizzie and her sister would regularly miss?
Not “Mother”, but the formal “Mrs. Borden”
To which she was always referred
Motivation for this most bloody
And heinous of turns?
But innocent she was to be found
Innocence amid the overcast cloud
Of guilt.
Then who?
Who is to be held to task?
For such a deed,
A deed so grisly and dark
Indeed.
Closure attained, in the scales of justice
But in blood, in shiver,
Forever,
The children sing the ode of Fall River -
“.....Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
An when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one”.
(2013)
