A poem by Chengde Chen
A Royal Question
With Her Majesty’s 90th birthday approaching,
Britain can’t help asking an inconvenient question:
why still no sign of abdication?
Apart from anything else, won’t the 68-year-old future king
become too old for his future?
It is said that there are two reasons for her persisting.
One, it’s a British tradition that the monarch doesn’t retire.
Two, she made her vow in her coronation to serve for life.
Yet, how does she see her heir apparent’s situation?
Isn’t a mother’s devotion an instinctive “tradition” and “vow”?
If a ceremonial title weighs more than her son’s happiness,
hasn’t wearing the crown exhausted her motherhood?
To succeed to the throne is a prince’s natural desire,
much as students want to graduate or fledglings want to fly.
The humiliation of the long wait, the grey hair from restraint:
wouldn’t the mother have seen and understood?
She can pretend not to have, or choose to ignore them, but
can she ignore the resentment growing in his heart?
If he is waiting for, or even longing for, his mother’s…,
what would this mean to her?
The soul-stirring succession stories that happened in history
–the internal strife, the murderous fighting with drawn swords–
are the logical development of prince psychology.
To keep the throne, or the son, that is the question.
Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems. Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here
It is an evocative poem. Chengde is a master of verse.
ReplyDeleteBut is it philosophy?
* There are assumptions about personal motives, which would seem to be gracious and favourable to none. Are they appropriate to philosophy?
* There are implicit values of title and ambition, which are empty in themselves. Are they opened up to any kind of philosophical reflection?
* There would seem to be a tired modernist narrative, which seeks to eliminate the caprice of edict, fate, and death which is monarchy, and the life which we know.
* Is the poem falsifiable? It would appear that it may be applied just as easily to (for example) democracy or communism as to constitutional monarchy.
* What really disturbs me is the emphasis on human dynamics, at the expense of the sacredness of tradition and vow. In the Hebrew Prophets, there was a king named Abimelech, whose genocidal reign was born with the words: "Remember that I am your bone and your flesh."
It is an evocative poem. Chengde is a master of verse.
ReplyDeleteBut is it philosophy?
* There are assumptions about personal motives, which would seem to be gracious and favourable to none. Are they appropriate to philosophy?
* There are implicit values of title and ambition, which are empty in themselves. Are they opened up to any kind of philosophical reflection?
* There would seem to be a tired modernist narrative, which seeks to eliminate the caprice of edict, fate, and death which is monarchy, and the life which we know.
* Is the poem falsifiable? It would appear that it may be applied just as easily to (for example) democracy or communism as to constitutional monarchy.
* What really disturbs me is the emphasis on human dynamics, at the expense of the sacredness of tradition and vow. In the Hebrew Prophets, there was a king named Abimelech, whose genocidal reign was born with the words: "Remember that I am your bone and your flesh."
Posted on behalf of Chengde Chen, from China:
ReplyDeleteI'm not a royalist nor a republican, whichever way or how it would conduct wouldn’t bother me much. I only wanted to point out a contradiction in the current practice itself, which is obvious, and would have long been pointed out if it was in other circumstances, but it is evaded because it's a royal matter. This may reflect certain subconscious of the subjects. Philosophy for me is more of a tool that allows one to see things from unconventional angles, or dare to argue them – behind the shield of logic.
Posted on behalf of Chengde Chen, from China:
ReplyDeleteI'm not a royalist nor a republican, whichever way or how it would conduct wouldn’t bother me much. I only wanted to point out a contradiction in the current practice itself, which is obvious, and would have long been pointed out if it was in other circumstances, but it is evaded because it's a royal matter. This may reflect certain subconscious of the subjects. Philosophy for me is more of a tool that allows one to see things from unconventional angles, or dare to argue them – behind the shield of logic.