When ‘why’ deserts me and now rye’s anathema
and wordplay fails to keep emotions out
I grow sombre, still, elated. I am a jumble.

My memories fill and empty what was me
– or ‘I’ – I still search language for a clue
to what it’s all about – until, relaxing,
I join enjoyed memories and flow.

Our decades on the throne give us perspective.
We do not listen to the folk we greet.
If they have titles, they are derived from some selective
amusement. We and they both know it’s meet
that they bow somewhat profusely while we gaze
at the wall behind them. Each must know his place
as we know ours. Until the end of days
we will reign sublimely, chosen by the grace
of God, our only peer, He’s claimed to us.
Things change and princes marry, die, divorce
not always in that order and the fuss
of ministers and budgets is a course
to run, say some unhindered by a throne
and wishing till they’re ill they had our own.

He lies if you can call it that on stones
below the rapids that he ran last night
on a dare no-one remembers when police
conduct polite enquiries. How he stares.

Let us go then you and I
to a place where wild woodpeckers fly
beneath a pallid piebald sky

and I – ashamed that I live still –
revise each Wednesday my own will
while you – pert, tall and right now shrill –

emit grace notes that rise and float
outside across our castle’s moat
into a book Lord Byron wrote

or would have, had not Neptune felled
him swimming in the Dardanelles,
or Hellespont. All’s gone. Just as well.

Oncoming night assembles stars
that light our paths. Look, there goes Mars:
sword, sandals, sneer and scenic scars

identify him as the sod
who starts the wars we fight for God
and Country when, succinctly shod,

we march off singing, smiling, chanting
or – if we’re returning – ranting.
The gods adore our gallivanting.

They think we are when panting cute
and we’re of all the things they shoot
their favourites cause like them we loot

and lust, and languish, all the while
imagining we’ve wit and style.
We muddle on. It makes them smile.