I

Dear John Wilmot, rake and earl,
every inch the modern man,
I write this like a nervous girl
confessing that I am your fan,
pouring out my adoration
in an act of restoration.

I write to tell you all my news
with just a modicum of wit,
conceding to most scholars’ views
that you alone are really ‘it’,
first in elegance, first in style,
as quick with sword as with a smile,

a kind of Stuart Errol Flynn,
soldier, courtier, lover, brawler,
as full of wickedness and sin
as a Grimsby fishing trawler
is as full of scaley cod -
and yet you died at peace with God.

I write in times of dire trouble
when we wake to news of war,
when cities are reduced to rubble,
and MPs argue points of law,
seeking for their absolution
a much needed resolution.

No stranger to the call of Mars -
you fought against the bulbous Dutch
and earned your share of battle scars
but were no fighting man as such -
I wonder what you make of us,
whose new millenium is dust?

Do you haunt the Upper Chamber,
scornful still of rattling sabre,
do you look down on each new member,
loathing Tory, loathing Labour?
Or do those daft fools underwhelm
a peer gone to another realm?

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Three hundred years and peace is still
as freakish as a thornless rose
and we like you must pay the bill
for ordnances beyond survey -
this is the world, its wanton way.

We started out with such high hopes,
with restoration if you will,
with fortunes and with horoscopes
which promised us we’d all be equal,
a polity where wealth was shared,
where our great leaders showed they cared.

But here we are, much like your grace,
unimpressed by those who govern,
sick of the sight of each fat face,
those warlocks and their witches’ coven,
whose time is short, but who won’t go,
who’ve brought us this new world of woe.

‘God bless our good and gracious Tone
Who knows which buttons he should push,
Who said that we could play alone,
Or else play with his little Bush.’
Forgive this clumsy paraphrase:
I’m distracted - Iraq’s ablaze.