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I met him in a London trench
Digging a route in some development.
I met him full of his heavy work
All that early morning,
And head bowed, and steady rhythm
Labour his way through the hours.
He was the king of Ireland.
He was of a royal line
Lost into some war or battle
In the heart of the Middle Ages,
Lost in a far away dispersal.
And now in his mid-morning break
Sat on the throne of a ditch,
The scepter shovel in his left hand
And five pointed crown of a torn hat.
I watched him stare away
Into the London haze,
I watched the distance in his eyes
And standing up after a while
Lower his head again,
Return to the thousand year-long exile.
(From memories of working on a building site
in London during the summer in the late sixties,
and imagining that any one of the Irish labourers there
could have been descended from a distant royal line.)
Peter Makem
Check out more of Peter's poetry at www.petermakem.co.uk
