No language, no country
By Simon Maddrell
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.
