The Son of Man in Parliament Square

Banded light breaking soft across his chest,

He stands defaced and fixed like stone, as dawn

Settles on our square, and workers, tourists,

Furtive lovers shoulder past his forlorn

Frame, once famed, perhaps, though nevermore. It’s

No surprise to those who knew him best.

Which I did not. I do not know the times

He went striding past the pediments and

Portes cochères, ignoring those who stared at

Coal-black horses – heads starred with a white brand;

At soldiers astride in their blue cloaks that

Shrouded flanks, croups – the geldings’ arching spines.

 

Farther on, before his eyes filled with green,

He’d walk beneath the portico, among

Whose ionic columns children ran and hid;

Stare across at where revolution, one

January morning, had begun; ask – did

Charles shiver beneath his shirts, but unseen?

Think now – divine right forced to account,

Or botched corpse, mortal proof, never in doubt?

 

He was the apple of his mother’s eye;

He was his Father’s supplicant;

He wore without complaint the shirt and tie –

The Son of Man in bowler hat.

 

Farther, past inert Haig, he could see

The monument to those he helped inter.

About him raw wind skirred, its direction

Unclear, spreading leaves on his face to blur

Those, after Eden, marked for election,

Which he shunned, trusting that posterity

Would save him from reprobation. For thine

Is not power, nor glory; for thine is

Not the first act – thou must enact. For this

Is the vocation of the palatine.

 

Approaching now the orchard fruiting stone,

Where malum flowered first and found its essence

Coddled in petrified inflorescence.

(His elbow backwards broken as he’d grown;

His shoulder hanging lower than it should;

His tendons fusing slowly to his bones;

A body that articulates the tone

That marks the time before his desuetude.)

 

The pylon bears the empty tomb before

The First Lord’s black steel cage: the sacrament

Of absent life and death – what could remain

But memory caught in ageless present?

Now, those who pass will helplessly profane –

For language, though imperfect, must endure.

 

He once helped others see the hidden signs:

The words entwined among the spreading roots

Of words

Which blindly beg for rain to seep into

Their bark,

Composed of dense solutes,

Which then dissolve and flow into the deep

Aquifers coursing through unconscious minds.

 

His calling still persists, though now we claim

It otiose and something to efface,

For wonders are now felt to be the truth.

The hierophant lies dead, and in his place

We stand and fancy to divine the smooth,

Immortal certainties we use to frame

Our concupiscent vanities and fears.

It may be we are better off

Alone –

Confessor, intercessor, whispering

To ourselves,

Dowsing above the unknown

Snarl of roots in griming clod, the

Longing

For the unmasking cataract that clears

The ground on which we kneel before the tree,

And wait for fruit to fall and set us free.

 

At last now at the square in which he rests

Among the unpleached lime trees, stripped of leaves.

Where Churchill, Palmerston, and Peel help guard

The sward from Palace, Court, and Church. Sheaves

Of palm fronds trampled into mulch have marred

The stones on which he stands as he divests

Himself of time. His immanence is place –

One never saved for him inside the House

Divided by decree; eroded by

The wracking squalls of time that also douse

His mind, when seized by dreams that he can die

And look for his own consecrated space.

 

A servant once, a servant evermore –

It’s no surprise that passers-by ignore

His longing to eradicate the trace

Of the apple hanging before his face.