I wasn’t going to write another Blog so soon, but…

To be honest, the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has seriously rocked the foundations on which most of us have lived our lives, pretty much all of us born in the 1970s have never known a world where she was not a constant. Her death rocked our world to its core.

However, I found in the week following her death I started to write an awful lot of what might be termed ‘Occasional Poems’ which really annoys me from one perspective – mainly because I find them really odd, it’s like trying to force words into a construct to commemorate an occasion, or a funeral, or death. I went off Simon Armitage after his poem about the Unknown Soldier which I just thought was awful and I’ve read it a couple of times and still don’t know why I dislike it so. (To be honest I didn’t think much of the poem he wrote regarding the Queen’s death either, but he is the Poet Laureate and since no one complained I must perforce assume that it was acceptable.)

So, despite the fact that I really think ‘Occasional Poems’ are naff, I’m attaching all the ones I wrote because they’ll get no traction otherwise, even if I think they’re awful and really don’t describe how I feel, or how the nation feels, or even how the world feels. As I think I may have mentioned in one of the poems I wrote, it feels like our world has been pulled out from beneath us and nothing is the same anymore. Which of course being honest, it isn’t.

Sorrow

We are bereft, crying in the wilderness

Numb with shock and grief,

For the mother of our nation

Our beloved Queen has died.

She saw so much, came to the throne

In her own sorrow, after the death

Of her father, yet stood

Blade-straight, steel true for her people.

I have no words to comfort,

For my tears fall like rain –

For a woman I did not know,

For a sorrow I cannot describe.

You reigned, glorious for seventy years,

Matriach and monarch combined,

Head of our nation, our commonwealth

Honoured and respected by all peoples

I know not waht happens after death

But I hope that you got to Paradise

Were reunited with those you loved,

And now rest in final peace.

Endings

This golden, Elizabethan Age

It’s seven decade span,

Bright and shining as the sun

Passes now with the death of the Queen.

Now we enter a Carolingian Age

What will our monarch be?

Will he be like Charlemagne the Great

Laying waste to all before him?

Heraclitus said that change like a river

Is inevitable, even if it is glacier slow

Our attempt to hold Time back futile

Like sand trickling though our fingers.

I know not what what the future holds –

I am reminded of the Chinese Curse

Or it may be a Blessing –

‘May you live in interesting times.’

And still the mourners come

Coffin draped with Royal Standard

Scarlet, Silver, wood, crown imperial

Royal purple clad catafalque

And still the mourners come,

And in Westminster Hall

We see curtseys, deep bows, salutes

Tears of sorrow for a monarch loved

And still the mourners come,

A moment caught in Time,

Like an insect in amber,

This mighty sovereign lying in state

And still the mourners come,

Honoured by her subjects and the globe

But the world turns onwards –

And cares not for Queens no matter their rank

And still the mourners come,

A sea of peoples, of all ages, races and creeds,

Their faces silent and solemn

As they walk past the dais.

And still the mourners come,

To pay their respects and mark the passing

Of a great and noble Queen

To honour her life and service.

This isn’t the poem I wanted to write,

I wanted to compose a sonnet,

Of great worthiness, a lofty ode, a paean

To our beloved Queen Elizabeth

This isn’t the poem I wanted to write

This is a scrappy, badly-worded verse

To try and express my sorrow –

My grief and total shock,

To try and understand the ‘Why?’

When the only answer is, ‘Because.’

I scribbled more terrible verse, but I won’t subject you to it because it’s so cringeworthy that your eyes would melt if I subjected you to it. Anyway, I’ll try to get back on track in my next Blog – although if I am honest I’m not sure when this will be.