Love Poem: A Peasant's Revenge, Part Ii
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Written by: David Welch

A Peasant's Revenge, Part Ii

...Early the next morn screaming arose
when the servants found him there in the bed,
blood matter his beard, his tongue was swollen,
his face blue as he lay there, quite dead.

And right next to him the woman did lay,
also dead, though her face held a smile,
I learn closed and sniffed a peculiar scent,
a poison I’d not seen in quite a while.

She had smeared it all across her full lips,
then kissed the king and doomed both to their deaths,
I wondered who sent such an assassin,
but recognition hit and stole my breath.

It was the woman from that ruined town,
whose poor husband Malistare had killed!
She must have escaped, and not been enslaved,
Tten with a cold lust for vengeance been filled.

Had she known about such poisons back then?
Local herbs or such things, who can say?
All I knew is that it had been seven years,
she’d been planning a long time for this day.

Of course the people heard nothing of this,
they were told that the Gods had ‘called him home,’
‘struck down’ at thirty, such a ‘tragedy,’
all of Blenum wept loudly and moaned.

And with no trueborn heirs to take the throne
the whole lineage had died with the King,
all knew war was coming, so they blamed me,
said I should’ve saved him, should have done something.

I was, of course, sent into exile;
forty years gone, I am facing my end,
but truth should be known, that whole dynasty
was brought down by a mere peasant’s revenge.