From A Painting By Hans Holbein: Portrait Of Anna Meyer (C.1526) Poem by Wild Bill Balding

What have they done to you, Anna Meyer?

Dispirited eyes focus on the floor.
Cloth carapace binds your torso
as securely as the armour it resembles.
Are they - or you - scared of your body,
of your budding maturity?

Must a Burgomeister's daughter
live out the lie
that she is not a woman in the making?

Should a Burgomeister's daughter
be kept in wraps until her marriage,
when the armour is removed
but the shell remains?

Does the Burgomeister's daughter
get to play like other children,
or is she already locked into
the rôle of doll-child,
name, face, personality interchangeable
with any who will say yes Papa
and no Papa, and bow just so
to official visitors?

Do you dream, Anna Meyer,
of a different kind of existence,

or are you on the way to being
the wife of another Burgomeister,
giving birth to other Annas,
evolved to exist in shells
of your and their own making?