PASTRY
At the center of the tart
atop the cream
a leaf of chocolate
and a walnut.
Imagine the colors:
it's a pumpkin tart
skin of aspic
on a disk
of gilded cardboard.
Once upon a time two kings met on a cloth of gold.
One of them would ravage a countryside to secure his son
a bride and a kingdom. But it didn't work: It was the other king's grandson
married her, and then another, and their son
inherited the throne
in place of his own.
The commoners must have thought them all
characters from an unusually vicious fairy-tale.
What's the connection? That she proved to be a French tart?
That none of these kings and queens could for all their wealth have found
nor pumpkin nor chocolate, nor anything else
of a continent yet to be taken and destroyed?
But good on the tongue, with a tart brew
of berries from the land of frankincense.
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