When the ghost of Anne Boleyn came by I rather hoped
That she'd shyly confess that had I only been alive
In 1526 Fat Henry wouldn't have stood a tinker's
Chance with her but, as usual, she pretended that
She'd just dropped by to see poems being made. Tourists, she said,
Were saying they'd seen her spirit at Fotheringhay Palace
Looking shabby and forlorn and dropping her cut-off head
So that it bounced. "Can't they tell me from Mary Queen of Scots?
I'm almost a foot shorter and more delicately made;
It took three axe-blows to take off her head; one sword-stroke
Did for me. Her head's lips moved for fifteen minutes afterwards
While mine maintained a discrete and politic silence."
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