From Clare Higgins

Now is the winter of my disinterment

Made glorious news by common digger’s hand.

In a new world they have unearth’d my bones:

Where barded steeds once galloped off to war,

Now metal horses thunder o’er the roads,

And men have stationed them above my grave.

Five hundred summers I slept in the earth

Once grim-faced war robbed me of life betimes.

What good I did was with me deep interr’d;

My honor wounded by a playwright’s pen.

Though I’ll be buried as befits a king,

The scholars still debate my history.

And yet what secrets I would fain unlock,

To all the world’s ears, if my bones could talk.

By Clare Higgins