‘Emma’s Attitudes’

“She is better than anything in Nature. In her particular way she is finer

than anything that is to be found in antique art.”

Sir William Hamilton

Arachne
Nursemaid, barmaid, perched on the Flintshire front stoop,
weaving

Bacchante
Dancing at the Temple of Health and Hymen;
atop Sir Harry’s table, deliciously displayed

Circe
John Graham, Willett Payne, Sir Harry, Charlie –
all swine who visited Aeaea before Odysseus docked

Miranda
Soon-to-be Lady, landing in Naples, a gift
between men. Inspired, she writes her own sequel

St Cecilia
Married to her collector, the old knight holds the light:
she performs – picture to picture – perfectly framed

Agrippina
A danger, still, to be a woman too close to power –
her friend, the Queen of Naples, whose sister is Queen of France

Medea
Impatient, she awaits her very English Argonaut,
be-Nelsoned in blue with gold anchors everywhere

Cleopatra
Strutting through Europe, fresh from the Nile,
both Caesar and Antony in tow, tria juncta in uno

Flora
Strewn in may-flowers, nursing a daughter,
nestled in the brief, late-blooming, spring

Sibyl
A deathbed: she and her lover, holding fast
to a fading husband

The Spinstress
Content at Paradise Merton, Horatia present;
in Horatio’s absence, 50 letters from the Victory

Niobe
The legislature, enacting annuity for their hero’s heirs,
make no provision for collateral relations

Alecto
Careless in grief and anger, an easy mark,
wretched in King’s Bench Prison

Magdalene
Repenting, some, as all debtors must,
extolling her daughter improve her time