​

The Son of the Sea considers his future,

how he pretends to put up with the pretence 

of the Lord of Mann – a role occupied by 

 

a British Queen fluent in English & French 

– No language, no country. Mere mortals 

come and go, five times in seventy years, 

 

she stepped upon his isle, not once for twenty. 

He muses, it’s not the cow that that lows most 

that gives the most milk. He knows she doesn’t 

 

have a little bone in her breast, and forty-pieces 

of Maundy money doesn’t make up for that. 

Crown Protectorate is not a name fitting the Act, 

 

especially when she leaves the job to a man with 

a white flamingo feather in his hat. I’ll give thee 

fallow land, he mutters, holding a knowing stare 

 

across the sea, he recalls his favourite proverb, 

The greatest pleasure in life lies in doing 

that which people say we cannot do.