Cinderella's Palace

"Ah make we most of what we yet may spend
Before we too in the dust descend" -Omar Khayyam

The castle rises above the super lush meadows
To stand silhouetted against the forever summer sky
A realer than real Warwick or Windsor
Its turreted roofscape
Fortified with galleries of battlement
That have never seen loosed arrows or boiling oil
Memories hark back to days
When this gothic fantasy grew up
Still survives unchanged
By the nerest thread of chance
In the delicate stairs & corridors
With its pallid watercolours
And its wrinkled old runner & early electric lights
In their opal glass shades
Makes a little corner of Cheltenham
In a very foreign field
The Maharajah is never expected back
So the palace servants squat in the shade
Of formal creeper clad doorways
The staircase to the ballroom
Will never see again the sweep of ballgowns
And the strange tripods that stand
With one foot extended to balance
On the steep steps that will never again
Be draped with potted ferns
The ballroom itself is sounded asleep
Like a palace in a fairytale
Or does the crystal sofa
Wait in gloom for Cinderella's prince?

SIGNED-ALAN "GADZOOK" PANGBORN
Cinderella's palace is a real structure;seat of the Maharajah of Mysore; modern day Bangalore. Decaying Splendour.