Poet Laureate Simon Armitage publishes elegy for Prince Philip, titled ‘The Patriarchs’
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The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, has written a poem to mark the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Entitled The Patriarchs - An Elegy, the poem was published on the day of Philip's funeral on Saturday.
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Hide AdIt pays tribute to Philip's distinguished career in the Royal Navy, and refers to his generation as "husbands to duty" and "great-grandfathers from birth".
The poem describes the duke's generation as the "last of the great avuncular magicians" who "kept their best tricks for the grand finale".
In its final verse, it reads: "But for now, a cold April's closing moments / parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon / snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown."
After his family fled Greece, Philip grew up in England, and joined the navy after leaving school in May 1939.
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Hide AdHe then enrolled at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where he rose rapidly through the ranks, earning promotion after promotion.
At the age of 21, Philip had become one of the youngest officers in the Royal Navy to be made First Lieutenant and second-in-command of a ship.
He was appointed to the destroyer HMS Wallace, which in July 1943 was dispatched to the Mediterranean and provided cover for the Canadian beachhead of the Allied landings in Sicily.
Armitage, who was appointed laureate in 2019, has recently penned poems on lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic and the 100th anniversary of the burial of the Unknown Warrior.
Read the full elegy below.
The Patriarchs – An Elegy
The weather in the window this morning
is snow, unseasonal singular flakes,
a slow winter’s final shiver. On such an occasion
to presume to eulogise one man is to pipe up
for a whole generation – that crew whose survival
was always the stuff of minor miracle,
who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,
fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea
with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes.
Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plans
across billiard tables and vehicle bonnets,
regrouped at breakfast. What their secrets were
was everyone’s guess and nobody’s business.
Great-grandfathers from birth, in time they became
both inner core and outer case
in a family heirloom of nesting dolls.
Like evidence of early man their boot-prints stand
in the hardened earth of rose-beds and borders.
They were sons of a zodiac out of sync
with the solar year, but turned their minds
to the day’s big science and heavy questions.
To study their hands at rest was to picture maps
showing hachured valleys and indigo streams, schemes
of old campaigns and reconnaissance missions.
Last of the great avuncular magicians
they kept their best tricks for the grand finale:
Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.
The major oaks in the wood start tuning up
and skies to come will deliver their tributes.
But for now, a cold April’s closing moments
parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon
snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown.