The Palm Tree of Rusafa

The Palm Tree of Rusafa is a poem of exile that becomes, in Catalina of Aragon’s telling, a quiet confession of her own homesickness. Its image of a palm tree growing far from its native land gives form to separation from family and home; as Arthur, Prince of Wales, listens, the poem leads Catalina toward the grief she has not yet been able to voice directly.

The poem and its image

At Arthur’s request for a story, Catalina chooses a Moor’s poem. She describes its speaker as a man born in the deserts of Arabia who, after coming to Spain, misses everything about home. The poem makes that longing visible through a palm tree transplanted far from the land of palms: “A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa, Born in the west, far from the land of palms. I said to it: How like me you are, far away and in exile In long separation from your family and friends. You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger And I, like you, am far from home.” The tree’s condition is more than distance alone. It has taken root, but in soil where it remains a stranger; the speaker recognizes in it his own separation from family and friends. That comparison lets the poem hold two facts together: a person may establish a life in a new place and still feel far from home. Catalina does not spell out that parallel before reciting the poem. Its image does the work of making homesickness speakable.

A tale shared between husband and wife

The poem is told in an intimate scene. Arthur settles against the pillows while Catalina leans forward, fixing her blue gaze on the bed curtains as if she can see beyond them to another place. Her way of telling briefly makes the familiar room a frame for elsewhere: the imagined landscape of the poem and the home left behind. Arthur listens to its simplicity and remarks, “It is not like our poetry.” Catalina agrees, then explains that its people love words and like to express a true thing simply. That exchange sets the poem’s plainness against Arthur’s expectation of a different poetic style, while giving Catalina a chance to describe what she values in it. The simplicity is not a lack of feeling: the poem’s direct comparison carries the force of exile without ornament. Arthur receives it in silence before responding, and the scene allows the poem’s emotional meaning to emerge through their exchange rather than through an explanation imposed on it.

From the tree to Catalina’s confession

After hearing the poem, Arthur opens his arms; Catalina lies beside him, thigh to thigh, side to side. He touches her face and notices that her cheek is wet. When he asks about her tears, she initially says nothing. The silence matters: the poem has disclosed her feeling to Arthur before she can name it herself. He recognizes that she misses home and takes her hand, kissing her fingertips. He reassures her that she will grow accustomed to life there, imagining the long future of their “thousand thousand days.” Catalina answers quickly that she is happy with him, but then falters and identifies what the poem has brought close: her mother. She misses and worries about her, explaining that she is the youngest and that her mother kept her with her as long as she could. Arthur answers that her mother knew she would have to leave.

Meaning and narrative role

The poem’s importance lies in the movement from an apparently chosen story to a personal admission. Catalina introduces it as the tale of another exile, yet the tree’s estrangement gives her a likeness through which to approach her own separation. Her tears, her pause, and her eventual mention of her mother turn the poem into a form of indirect speech: she can first tell of someone far from home, then acknowledge that the longing is hers. The scene holds comfort and loss together without making one cancel the other. Catalina says she is happy with Arthur, while also missing her mother and worrying about her; his promise of shared years offers reassurance but does not erase that absence. The poem therefore marks neither a rejection of her new life nor a simple resolution of homesickness. It gives their closeness room to contain both her attachment to Arthur and her continuing bond with the family she has left.