My school was very old, all cold stones

and wooden floors, a tomb of Latin and dust.

 

When there were no small boys around

to laugh at her white face or pull her hair,

the first Queen Elizabeth bustled along the corridors,

trailing her skirts, stopping to run her tongue over rotten teeth,

shrieking with pain, muttering of Catholic foes and plots,

seeking Raleigh to berate or Drake to pet

for singeing the beard of the King of Spain.

 

Mostly she sought a lover to fill her aching void,

that regal emptiness bred of splendour.

 

Routinely, we sat in the august hall,

sang Jerusalem and Floreas, Wakefieldia,

our volume a substitute for harmony,

we too starved of affection, held in thrall.

Arrows of desire came blunt and barbed.

There were no doting girls to smooth our fletchings,

there was no romance: only antique broken desks

where the spirits of ‘others many’ still sat, 

rituals, stinking urinals and, always, Russ Field,

captain of England rugby, the school bully,

his vicious acolytes playing court, keen to act his whims,

turning Elizabethan in their carelessness and cruelty

and that was part of our learning. 

 

Turpe Nescire, we were taught - it is shameful to be ignorant -

as we kept our heads lowered against such spite,

whilst the Queen sighed all around, a cold wind in the daytime

but wandering like a bitter, tuneless troubadour at night,

concerned for herself, of course, and never for our plight.

 

Despite her jewels, despite her gown,

rare taffeta and silk, rich velvet and lace, purple and soft,

she never found affection: there was no comfort for her,

I am sure.  Not there.  None to be found. 

And we did not offer a moment’s thought for her history.

Alone, distraught, she dwelt on stirring battles

fought long ago on raging seas with foreign powers,

whilst her best hopes of dashing consorts, her desire

for a fond heart to warm her in a deep feather nest:

those were merely recurring fantasies, like ours.

 

As we struggled with Shakespeare’s verse, weighing each tryst,

his wheel of fire, the loving that we missed,

conjouring girls, their eyes and legs and breasts our distraction, our desire,

the nearest she came to passion, trailing clouds of musk and rose,

was to step a galliard with his ghost, commanded to attend,

the Bard struggling to keep pace, creaking with arthritic knees,

over-conscious of his flaking pate and country paunch,

seeking a way to escape to his second best bed and his wife

without offending Her Majesty, to emerge alive,

slip away to the calm of Stratford without losing his head,

contrive to purge himself of the school of the Virgin Queen and its tragedies.

​

© Keith Brindle 2024