The more I have read of the short, troubled reign of England’s King Richard III the more I am sure that he was at least as much ‘sinned against as sinning’.
At best, his modern detractors forget that while the last Plantagenet monarch was a product of a very violent age, he was an extraordinary modernist, laying the foundations of the British legal system in areas like bail, legal aid and the end of trade restrictions on book printing. My own knowledge is too limited to provide a contemporary equivalent, but readers may be able to provide one!
I think it is most appropriate that his legacy is such that the present Queen described his reinterment at Leicester Cathedral as “an event of great national and international significance” while the popular actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, discovered to be a distant second cousin, was invited to read the poem, Richard written for the occasion by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.
---------------
“Richard
“My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil,
a human braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
emptied of history. Describe my soul
as incense, votive, vanishing; you own
the same. Grant me the carving of my name.
These relics, bless. Imagine you re-tie
a broken string and on it thread a cross,
the symbol severed from me when I died.
The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the Resurrection of the Dead …
or I once dreamed of this, your future breath
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.
Technorati Tags: #PerfectlyWritePoetry,#Natalie Wood,#His Name Now Carved in History,#King Richard III,#Benedict Cumberbatch,#Carol Ann Duffy,#Richard© Natalie Wood (27 March 2015)
No comments:
Post a Comment