Rumpelstiltskin

By Glyn Maxwell b. 1962 Glyn Maxwell

‘Your name is Rumpelstiltskin!’ cried

The Queen. ‘It’s not,’ he lied. ‘I lied

The time you heard me say it was.’

‘I never heard you. It’s a guess,’

She lied. He lied: ‘My name is Zed.’

She told the truth: ‘You’re turning red,

Zed.’ He said: ‘That’s not my name!’

‘You’re turning red though, all the same.’

‘Liar!’ he cried: ‘I’m turning blue.’

And this was absolutely true.

And then he tore himself in two,

As liars tend to have to do.

Source: The Boys at Twilight: Poems 1990-1995 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000)