A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie

 

                         Not all the water in the rough rude sea
                         Can wash the balme from an anoynted King.

                                                  Shakespeare, Richard II

 

 

Big dreams on carthorses, amid jewels, swan feathers, flowers. A troop of trotters. Captured ecclesiastics paraded before Christ, the Abbey Shop closed for relics. The Lord Mayor rummages through his robes to find his invite. Brown pecking Cherie, brexit Cameron in his funereal waistcoat, before Boris, hair a-blow, Carrie with terrier teeth. The Empire arrives, tripping over Churchill’s floor trap, carrying flags you’ve never seen before. Wondering if they’re trooping on the right side of history. Just a light drizzle – the tossing horses are led out. Snorting Windsor Greys tug companion potentates in white robes past slow renditions. The statue of Charles I can’t ‘keep an eye on’ our jigging monarch, the disturbing oscillation of his mechanical hand. Over a sea of rainhats arms hoist mobiles for footage, actuality. Drones print the golden vision of coach-house godliness. They squeeze through admiralty arch, old nags headed for the knackers; one limps the corner, shot off-screen. Anne in her Napoleon headgear. O Hazlitt, the organ swells for a cast list borrowed from a fake Shakespeare history! Seven million women passed in a moment. A royal peculiar is a trombone discord in the robes of the deep state. An old dolly in pink springs to her feet, waving the peasants up. More hangers-on hang on, like the organist’s long note waiting for recycled crowns to be cushioned in. Into the house of the lord, simpering and slouching, the royal actor’s borne: fling the peace of Jerusalem upon the mustard rug. Positioned as much as they position themselves, let alone our ‘armchair thrones’ the State Bard promises. Welsh comes with the Hashtag of Othering. The undoubted king is accompanied by an Alice in Wonderland playing card playing his hand by repeating inevitable oaths and sharing a Bible open to the seventh commandment. The lively oracles of god received with sad eyes. He shuffles his buttocks, grasps the book, bends, kisses it. The moment of ecclesiastical uncertainty dissolves into a scribble on parchment and a hymn by Byrd, scooping song from echoes between those ancient walls. But with his keener eye did he espy a wobbly busby on the misty metaphors? ‘O clap your hands!’ they sing, but none obeys. Set at liberty those who are bruised. Jesus doesn’t grasp power, but a young princess looks at her new shoes, when she should be loving the environment. ‘[ …] My King’ we hear, with crown of thorns, sponge of incontinence, stone of dynasty, boxed in, stripped off, regal bosom rubbed with oils, as Handel blasts to cover the scents and our senses. Grip the sword, for fire is in the girdle! (Money will be paid to redeem the sword, as byzantine as this music.) More velvet-lined golden robe-royal clasped around this now-eternal monarch, Britanocles, the Great and Good. The orb rests in his godly paw, flexing his fist in a silk glove offered by a Sikh. A brick of density. He bows not his comely head as crown is delivered with a threat, squeezed onto his little wriggly brow. How can you have ‘private reflection’ while you are parroting an oath? May he live forever: the pair are co-eternal now. A jigger that they think a joyful noise is surely not the voice of a psalm. A dither inside a dodder, they’re mad people processing an asylum, inventing Christmas presents in early May from old stones and odd gloves. ‘Non-working royals’ mouth wordlessly through the Purcell they’ve never heard before. Now they’re promising angels and archangels, not Jeremy Corbyn at Archway Kebab. Oh, Lamb of God, what law were we detained under, what crime have we committed, registering our de-subjection, for surely now the law of the land is verily the law of god, the aura of two empty thrones? Breezy treason! Crashing cymbals, a sword swung on the barren heath, bequeath dismissive symmetries dropping from the humming apex. The twinkling eye under his twinkling crown betrays his purchase upon all he surveys. Manhandled out of our scrutiny.

 

 

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Robert Sheppard

 

 

 

 

 

 

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