"The Patriarchs: An Elegy" by Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage, the United Kingdom's Poet Laureate, pays tribute to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, with a stirring elegy titled "The Patriarchs".

Armitage, who was appointed as Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019, said in an interview with The Guardian that Prince Philip "hated sycophancy," as such, he wanted to make sure that he did not write "anything that would have sounded sycophantic in his ears."

Armitage wanted a poem that would reflect the duke's "values and personality." 

"A lot of the commentary has been around duty and service – I saw it as a prompt for writing something dutiful, and in service of all people like him," he said. 

As Poet Laureate, Armitage has also penned profound poems about scientific discoveries, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, and the coronavirus. 

Read: "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.