Five times—always five—
the present President begs and begs.
King George with Queen Mary
—which Mary? Aunt Mary?—
is like what we imagine,
escaping endless intersecting circles
littered with old correspondences
like an egg of fire inside of a volcano.
The music doesn’t quite come through.
Useless for protection, the thin gray mist
lets everything show through: buttercups,
red clover, purple vetch. Why shouldn’t I
be ambitious? From our superior
vantage point, the child, sitting quietly,
draws another pigeon, yes, in the museum,
in a cobweb, in a different place.
The joking voice, a gesture, is gone,
is gone by eight or nine.
The cat stayed in the warm sheets.
(Andrew Shields, #111Words, a third cento with lines by Elizabeth Bishop, 15 December 2025)