Joan of Arc at Rouen

Of course I tried to escape,
the moon through the steel bars 
like my last horse’s sweat 
streaking across my thighs
in lines of iron tow rope
giving way.

In my youth my father dreamed of me
running away alongside soldiers. Then the wind held me 
like sheaves of wheat laid up by harvesters 
against the wall of the house 
where the voices are. The voices ask
for my life, but when my armies and I

are before our enemies I always ask them 
to surrender, I ask them to choose peace.
At Rouen I did the same.
But they refused. There is a time for wool 
and a time for fire, they said to me. So I

answered with my shield.
In the lime house
of my childhood, faintly
the smell of scythed wheat 
crushed by my mother’s steps 
approaching the checkered fields.

All I know is sometimes a homeland 
weighs like a pebble in a well’s 
depth, sometimes
like the wooden keels
of a thousand dead ships 
singing. I have chosen

the voices, above all else, I have defended them. 
But tonight the angels are far
and I hear no one
singing, no one calling
me, not even me.
I could bash anything against the fire

just to feel its warmth.