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Well Said, Carol!

 STATE/BANQUET

by Carol Ann Duffy

How it glitters and shines, The Grand Service,
among the rocks and the rubble,
laid out on a breezeblock horseshoe table,
six crystal glasses per setting.
It took eight servants three weeks to polish -
silver coated in a thin layer of gold -
even the concrete dust in the air seems glamourised
and the ruins are decked in the uplifting flags of
democracy.

To start, fillet of Dover sole filled with salmon mousse,
served on a bed of leeks with white wine sauce.
Poached Sandringham venison with truffles to follow,
then Key Lime Pie, and among the wines,
Chateau Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, 1990.
Yum-yum. Let the trumpets sound on the bombsite
as the great and the good pick their way through,
and a famished child peers through a bullet-hole in a wall.


Carol Ann Duffy was the UK’s poet laureate between 2009 and 2019. The US president, Donald Trump, and his wife, Melania, arrived in Windsor today to be met by the Prince and Princess of Wales, who escorted them to join the king and queen at a state banquet for 160 guests in Windsor Castle’s St George’s Hall. 

Duffy has written a poem, quoted above, to mark this as, meanwhile, Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza, and the Rusian invasion of the Ukraine goes on.


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