Sunday 4 August 2013

Naming Names

When peace still wore its newest gloss
and a nation's sorrows had rinsed it clean,
as rationing ended and fortune smiled
a girl child was named for a Queen.
Quite why her parents named her so
she would later find it hard to tell
unless they thought 'Elizabeth'
could be uttered like a spell
when its syllables might conjure forth
that brave new world they'd dreamed,
a fairer world, and kinder, too
in the rule of a fairy-tale Queen.
Now the bedtime tale is ended
and the embers in the hearth burns low;
greed and grief and lies grow thick
where an old crone flutes her woe;
and, safe behind that castle wall,
a milky princeling stirs and moans
while all the courtiers sweep a bow
to pay homage in this Game of Thrones. 

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