‘Two Deaths’ by Claire Askew

For Anne Askew

You lived for a month in the White Tower,
saying nothing in the cross-examination,
saying nothing as the men came in,
went out, as they swung the various instruments
of their work, whistled in the passageways.

It was June, and in the garden by the Tower
where the ladies walked, the honeysuckle
pushed its blooms out of the wall like hands.

They showed you the rack: told you how
they’d pop your hips and shoulders from the sockets,
dislocate your elbows and knees.
You didn’t speak, but climbed the device’s side
lay your ankles in the straps.

A man once told me, every human being
gets two deaths: the second one’s the last time
someone living says or writes your name.

Anne. It’s been five hundred and seventy years
since they lifted you down: your secrets
still wound in the cord of your throat,
the women whose locations you withheld
awake and listening from their beds.

I am weak, but Anne, I will keep
committing your name as if it’s a crime,
so the distant children’s children of those men
(whose second deaths came long ago)
will know you when you’re spoken of. 

They’ll know that you were twenty-six,
that you were told you would be burned.
They’ll know that as you waited in your cell,
and though it punished every nerve,
you took up your pen. You wrote it all.

From issue #2: spring/summer 2016

About the Author
Claire Askew’s debut collection, This changes things, was published by Bloodaxe in February 2016. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and its poems have been recognised by numerous publications and awards. Claire’s new collection-in-progress, How To Burn A Woman, is about witches and the natural world.