The Empty Throne

after Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The Queen, who is 80 today, is the best thing about the monarchy: constant, reassuring and one of the most accomplished politicians of our age. But the institution is finished and Elizabeth could well be all that’s keeping it alive.” Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 21st April 2006

I met a traveller from the wilds of Staines
who said: “I passed the monarch’s empty throne,
stood in the palace’s crumbling remains;
a half sunk statue of Prince Charles, his frown
marking the stone like a tube map of veins,
leans into a portrait of the Queen by Freud
in deference, bridging the vast ravines
between them, though the Queen still looks annoyed.
And on a brazen plaque these words appear:
“My name is Elizabeth, Queen of Queens:
look upon my heirs, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing else remains. All tourists have gone
and only leaves troop colours in the square
where, on her death, the republic was begun.

I wrote this cheeky adaptation of Shelley 10 years ago, whilst I was the Borkowski PR company's poet-in-residence, writing satirical poems "about celebrities, politicians and other scoundrels".

I'm not certain that the quote from Jonathan Freedland above the poem holds as much water today as it seemed to then, however much some of us may wish it did - the Royal PR machine has gone into overdrive in the intervening decade with weddings, babies, the appalling Clean for the Queen campaign, endless holiday photo albums masquerading as news and more. Added to this, we now have a government whose uxorious husbandry of the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us goes far beyond anything that Blair could have conceived.

Still, we'll see what the future brings. In the meantime, the closest I can bring myself to marking the occasion of Elizabeth II's 90th birthday is with a reposting of this backhanded compliment of a satirical poem, which was written in more hopeful times.