Summoned to judge the one we'd held in awe

Model in the mind of all we'd want to be

Enlarged by distance into faultlessness

And holy innocence embodied in the one revered

With short-sighted magnification.

Anguish fills the pen, quivering in trepidation

As the cross adds another vote rejecting

A leader respected and loved in absolutes,

Wresting forever from him and his the divine right

As the succession broadens into democracy.

But beatification, not the fall of its first son

Is the corporate error vicariously confessed,

And laid on the mercy seat of a despatch box,

Anchoring the office in the fallibility of frailty

Amid the imperfections of a woolsack and a throne.

After play-reading Tom Aitken's 'Ancestral Voices' and the ensuing discussion.

6 January 2006