SOMEBODY DIED

Once the death had been formally announced,

a member of the commentariat

remarked that the prospect of dying from cold

and hunger in one of the earth’s richest countries

had been rendered ‘insignificant’.

 

The Holocaust Memorial in Hyde Park,

London – one of the city’s eight ‘Royal Parks’ –

was turned into a garden of remembrance

for a rich old woman who died in her bed.

 

The Speaker of the House of Commons,

one of whose predecessors defied a king

and his torturers, declared the funeral

to be “the most important event

the world will ever see” – so putting

the Big Bang, the ability to make fire,

the invention of the wheel, Jesus Christ,

and the end of human life on earth,

for example, into their proper place.

 

***

 

Through medieval mummery that hints at

the divine right of monarchs to rule

and nostalgia for the greed of empire,

politicians and pundits and priests –

who patronisingly tell us what we feel

and what we have felt for seventy years –

have bamboozled this divided nation.

Millions of children go hungry each day

yet we are taxed to fund a lavish,

three-ring circus of inanity,

where few are entitled, and many defer,

where all dissent is cancelled or shamed,

and new divisions appear like sudden

sinkholes in a busy, familiar street.

 

***

 

After a long day of 24/7

coverage of flags, martial music,

and gold brocade, of piped laments, drum beats,

and bells tolling, of mobile phones held aloft,

and superstitious symbolism sanctified,

I remembered her father’s funeral,

when I was nine. We had the day off school.

 

With my maternal grandmother, who was born

six years before Queen Victoria

took the title Empress of India,

I watched the procession live in black and white

on our new tv with its nine inch screen.

There were no daytime tv schedules then,

and very few cameras capable

of outside broadcasts, so the programme

must have been comparatively short,

but the Dead March from Handel’s ‘Saul’, the slow march

of the sailors pulling the gun carriage –

that had borne the dead king’s father’s coffin,

his grandfather’s, and his great grandmother’s –

their deliberate steps, sliding each foot

so slowly before returning it to earth,

like booted dancers in grey greatcoats,

seemed to last almost forever on that

cold February day, when I first learned

what we will do for death.

 

 

King George VIQueen Elizabeth IIstate funerals