Mary Seton
It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women
(Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own)
i.
She is here without a room of her own.
The abbey she loved and grew to loathe
Was destroyed in the Revolution.
A poorer convent rose on her bones
And now it too has closed.
ii.
Property company logos on the ex-convent windows
Advertise skinny new religions.
Construction workers sweat revelations
Hammer open the cobbled stones
Releasing ancient protocols.
iii.
The air fills with microbes and dust
With traces of bromide and whispers
Of who you can trust
Stories of love, of loss and resistance
Emerge from the cracks, close in their distance.
Mary Seton was the best friend and lifetime servant of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Like Mary Stuart, her mother was French and her father Scots. They grew up together in both Scotland and France, and Mary Seton remained with Mary Stuart through her long years of imprisonment in England. Seton spent the last 20 years of her life living in relative poverty and isolation at the Convent of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames in Reims.
rachelclive scribblings 