Ramage and Bean

Ramage and Bean
Provided the scene
From which their story was told.
They gave us the setting –
A place suffocating
In a god, at the cost of it’s souls.

Ramage was the keeper
Of the Princely Sleeper –
Locked in the tower above.
Bean was his lover,
Kept tight undercover.
Hands tight through the skin of a glove.

When the boy fell to dream,
Ramage would shine a beam
Of light to the gate-lodge sill.
Bean would come to the ledge,
Drop down to the hedge
And progress, led on by his will.

Bean would then climb the stairs
To the tower, unaware
Of the danger he faced each night.
For in love one is blind
And he left behind
His reason in place of his light.

They would meet in the chamber,
As the fires turned to embers.
As wood turned to ash in the night.
There they’d embrace,
The other’s kisses they’d chase
And set their humours alight.

So entranced they would be,
That they failed to see
The boy, supposed sleeping next door.
He’d creep out of bed,
As hushed as he dead,
And sneak a look through the crack near the floor.

The boy had been preached,
To a god he’d beseeched
To forgive his sins great and small.
He knew what he saw,
Through the crack near the floor,
A sin – the worst if them all.

And so, Bean and Ramage,
Unaware, undisparaged,
Continued to meet by the stars.
They hushed their kisses,
Kept quiet hearts wishes,
Only stole day lit looks from afar.

One night while they met,
The Boy Prince crept
From his bed and down the back stair.
Along torch lit galleries,
Sweat drenched and heart hammering
With the weight of his God-given care.

The boy told the King,
Who sent bells to ring.
Sent the hounds to smell out the sin.
They were found in the tower,
And overwhelmed by the power
Of men scared of the passions within.

Ramage and Bean,
Closed down their scene -
They were hung at the first light of dawn.
Their ropes swung side-by-side.
Bodies flung to the tide.
Their love caused their curtain to fall.

No applause for this tale,
No “Lights up!” no hails
For performances beautifully played.
For this God fears the might
Of loves forced to the night.
He’d rather an empty, cold stage.