Queen Elizabeth I circa 1575, Nicholas Hilliard

Our eye should not rest on you, but upon
What is behind you: matters of state,
The machinery of mirrors and ears
By which we put what we will before you.

A face for England, shadowless and flat,
A collar of frost, the black and the gold,
A rose that must never simply be that
And a firebird snared in a grid of pearls.

Painter, paint not what you see, but what we
Will you to see, for we are what we would be:
Not a man, nor a woman; breathless, still;
Composed of imperial geometries.