His white head was dirty...where was his youth? No, he had concocted hope. People said his rooms would be unguarded...so they were. But I made no sound. The ugly Tower was still. What has happened to his Elizabeth: is she memory?
I wanted to talk to him about Spenser’s Faerie Queen, and say...Spenser...you know...no, Raleigh sailed to the Canaries, to Florida, Manoa...Hispaniola...cloak-thrower...knight...names...and his map, a large parchment, came out of the wall and stared at me, rebuking me: cloak-thrower...patron...names...John White said that he admired him...John White said...where was White now, now that he’s back from Roanoke?
Pushes hand through hair, coughs... I back away, wanting to put the wall between us. I shuffled down a few steps, disgraced, down to the street, cockroaches and rats scuttling, ivy blowing in the wind.
Let him finish his History of the World.
I had no right to disturb.
The blue cloak slips from Ellen’s shoulders and through the stabbed hole I see moon, stars, and fog, each flecked with red. Fog soaks the hole and then, then, there’s the face of an attacker, scarred, piratical. Something behind him fades into her face, so white. I see her smile her dazzling lover’s smile and I hear her laughter and the sound of her bracelets.
In the funeral procession
a small black casket is accompanied by Ann, Shakespeare,
his daughter in black, and others.