PRINCE PHILIP FALLS UPON HIS CEREMONIAL SWORD! (weekly poem)

PRINCE PHILIP FALLS UPON HIS CEREMONIAL SWORD!

With Dookey Phil soon on the dole,

Who will unveil our plaques?

We don't want such important work,

To fall on Mayoral hacks!

Such tasks as cutting opening tape,

At brand new civic loos; (1)

Requires carefulness of thought,

About the one we choose.

A brand new supermarket can't,

Be opened by a ham;

It needs that subtle Royal touch,

Or else becomes a sham.

It's said that lesser Royals will,

Step up to plug the hole;

But one needs breeding to engage,

In all this rigmarole!

And they, too, all have fully booked,

Engagements of their own;

From dawn to dusk they strain to help,

Those sitting the Throne.

They need to both sift and sort out,

The wheat from all the chaff;

And chose a (t)wit who's master of,

The odd insulting gaffe! (2)

Unless the gap is filled quite soon,

The UK will descend;

Into a worse than Brexit fall,

And that'll be the end.

Of Empire, Monarchy, The Lords,

The things that make us glad;

At least they are the things that do,

If one's a little sad! (3)

(1) “I declare this thing open, whatever it is.” Philip, Canada 1969.

(2) “If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.”

(The Duke to UK students in China in 1986)

(3) “Prince Philip has become a perfect, unimprovable example

of how the royal family can reduce millions of people, some of

them quite bright and normal, to a state of unquestioning idiocy”.

Terence Blacker: ‘The Problem wasn’t Philip, it was us’. Guardian 5/5

© Richard Layton