Poetry

POEMOTIONS

Text of book

Part Four (continued)

Aspects of Public Life

Start of page 113 in the book

Dead Queen Mum

Written on the eve of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at Westminster Abbey, 9 April 2002.

I

I was born in the year you were married:
I have lived all my time in your life.
So at last you are dead, Queen Mother,
and that is the end of your strife.

A Glamis girl, always a Glamis girl,
you needed a castle for life.
The Castle of Mey you called it:
cutting out the old name with your knife.

By right: you'd changed your own name
when kindly marrying Bert.
The Prince was besotted - who would not be,
at the gifts you could assert.

We have all celebrated those wonders,
and now weep at your funeral gates.
Thousands upon thousands weep for you
and I do too.

We weep for what you meant to us
throughout the century past.
A devilish century it was to be sure -
but you always stood up to the blast.

We cry and cry, all your subjects cry,
at the loss we feel in our skin.
Thank you, oh thank you, for staying so long -
a centre of quiet in the din.

Start of page 114 in the book

II

Now I must really concentrate,
attempting, before it's too late,
to sum up what you meant to us
Queen Mum.

You meant the old values,
though you would never have dreamt of saying it.
That's not the way they worked -
the signals in your special eyes.

The old values are no values
in your old subject's eyes of today.
But some of us still remember
what those values had to say.

We won't bury them with you, dear Ma'am,
as tomorrow you sink in the vault.
We have more regard for you than that
and shriek Hallelujah! hail Mary!

You are the best we ever knew.
We look to you to see us through,
even after tomorrow's brew,
and Windsor's civilised vault.

They will pray and pray, and sing away,
and what is wrong with that anyway?
They will sing away all you have to say -
There's a great deal wrong with that.

Start of page 115 in the book

III

The nitty gritty is not so pretty -
and when it comes down to that:
I'm not a happy chappy, now you Queen Mum have gone.
You walked with me all my days, and I'm sad.

My days will be lonely, now that you've gone.
Who will stand by my values now?
Who will care, anywhere, now that you've gone?
Oh, Oh, I'm the deserted one.

Good-bye Queen Mother, we love you so.
Your crooked smile, the silly hat,
told us all where it's at.
We'll miss you badly, and that's a fact.

IV

One final thought, as I go on my way,
bereft and listless without you:
one final thought, you'll relish I think,
indeed know - I would never doubt you.

This final thought I hug to myself;
it's about your last achievement.
As you sailed away, having done your best,
as you sailed away to Heaven,

Ma'am you spun a jest - and what a jest!
I spotted it here in Devon -
the land where Drake and Raleigh lived,
and the Pilgrim Fathers sailed.

Start of page 116 in the book

England, Devon means England,
and that is the joy of this jest,
Guardian folk thought England was gone
and so put you Ma'am to rest.

The unperceiving Guardian folk
rejoiced that you were dead.
'Day five: Queen Mother still dead' they wrote
and their trusting readers believed.

There'll be no one there, no one will come
wrote the silly Guardian folk:
you conquered Ma'am, they came in bulk;
and that was your crowning stroke.

That was your crowning stroke, hurrah!
over stupid Guardian folk.
That was your crowning stroke, dear Ma'am,
and your very last joke.

Start of page 117 in the book

Kindly Get Out Of My Country

'My Asian constituents in Ealing Southall believe that the vast majority of street robberies are committed by Somalis, of whom 25,000 have recently come to live in the area.'- Piara Khabra MP (2002).

God in Heaven, what a nightmare!
Who would have thought it could come to this?
Think about Ealing, English Ealing:
rhyming with healing, English healing.
Talk about Southall, English Southall:
rhyming, alas, with bugger all -
yet still for Heaven's sake English!

It is my country, beloved England,
on which the hordes have come down.
Foreign hordes, they are terrifying,
invading from God knows where
to alter the face of my England.
25,000 in Southall alone -
What are we playing at, letting in all these developing Arabs?

Ealing is nine miles west of St Paul's.
In St Mary's church lie the remains of Horne Tooke.
The other church of All Saints
commemorates an English Prime Minister
assassinated in 1812 in the House of Commons.
Gunnersbury Park, south of Ealing Common,
was owned by Princess Amelia, daughter of George the Second.

All that of Ealing is part of English healing, so what of Southall?
That too is part of our dear English history.
Southall had brickfields and flour mills.
The Grand Junction canal still runs through it.
Cattle markets are held weekly
under a grant of King William III.
The Elizabethan manor house remains.

Start of page 118 in the book

So what are they doing here in English Ealing, these rough African Somalis?
Why have we let them into Southall, in such huge numbers?
Who is now running our cherished English suburbs?
Is anyone running them, when it comes to letting hordes in?
Who gave officials the power to admit tens of thousands of desert Somalis?
Could it have been the limp liberal English Government of today?
I rather think these bleeding hearts have betrayed not only themselves but us.

I myself disdain those pathetically soft betraying creeps
whose English backbones have decayed to jelly,
whose brains are degenerate, as they slobber on their flaccid knees.
Licking the floor submissively, they love to lie down
to let Arabs or anyone else who is foreign
trample all over them - in the name of multiculturism.
Myself, I'm off for a walk in the other direction.

Which of you will meet me at that destination?
Who among the self-defeating English will accompany me
as I stoutly march to the last stockade?
Who will join me in my powerful cry, issuing from the heart,
addressed to the best, still remaining in small numbers,
the best of the glorious English, determined to shout, even if vainly:
kindly, if you wouldn't mind, get out of my country!

Start of page 119 in the book

The Prime Minister

This man told me he was Prime Minister
and therefore I had to do what he said.
He possessed, he told me, a vision
of how his people should behave -
and therefore I must do what he told me.

As this man's limousine swept away, I called after him
but he didn't stop to listen.
Listening I do not believe to be part of his make-up
for he is the lofty Prime Minister
who tells us to do what he says.

Do what I say, he tells us,
for I know what is best for you.
Kneel and obey, he orders,
and then you will enjoy the happiness
of conforming to what is laid down.

But I, and a few awkward others,
have our own ideas how to behave;
how to live our lives.
These might surprise the Prime Minister
as he wanders about laying down the law.

We don't go along with his isms;
for us they mean schisms.
We have our own ideas how to behave
formed before His Mightiness was dreamt of
and still, despite Him, enduring.

Not even a gleam in his old father's eye
was this haughty Prime Minister
when our decent ideals were formed.
So we will stick to them, thank you very much.
For we are of the faithful variety.

Start of page 120 in the book

The Democratic Deficit

I questioned Harold Acton
on the democratic deficit.
It's a loss he said
to be dropped to the lowest -
almost everyone loses.

Speaking from La Pietra,
with its Cinquecento windows,
and Quattrocento gardens,
Acton said when surrounded by masterpieces
one loses initiative.

In a cloud of wonder
all one's efforts appear to be dwarfed.
Though dwarfed, Acton's efforts were loftier
than those bogged down,
beswimmed, in the democratic swamp.