SORRY FOR ASKING (SCORE)

SORRY FOR ASKING (SCORE)

Sorry for asking
but are these rituals
not meant to show
continuity
rather than rupture?

I sat and watched
the whole gaudy display
took me back, Coronation
Babe that I am
to those early wooden
watch-it with Mothers
(by which I mean benign
Matriarch, not
Frank Zappa,
no place here
for Beyond the Fringe Satire
though Python
himself did say he
found it Pythonesque)

but it was hard to square
Hal at Agincourt, Edward
at Towton
with that solid golden
carriage

the Met swooping in for
the kill
to add more stars
onto their shields

determined that
everybody asking will
be sorry that they
did so

forgetting history”s great,
great capacity
for evening the score.