England

Like the other countries that constitute the United Kingdom, England doesn’t have an independence day, so instead I’m using St George’s Day, St George being the patron saint of England. I get the impression that of the four patron saints for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wale, the celebration of St George’s Day is the one that is least celebrated within its nation, but it’s all I’ve got, unless I were to go with the Queen’s Birthday, which is celebrated all over the United Kingdom. I like, however, using the patron saints days, and so 23 April is the day on which I celebrate all things English. (Scones. High tea. The Famous Five. Sandwiches. Wallace and Gromit. Dr Who.)

England has been inhabited for at least 13,000 years—it was the last area of the British Isles to be populated. Famously the Romans invaded Britain—Julius Caesar was the first to take a stab at it in 55 BCE, but it was nearly a hundred years later under Claudius that the more successful conquest took place. (It appears that the Goon Show may have been erroneous in depicting the reaction of the English on this occasion. It appears to be apocryphal that the English thought the Romans had arrived to play soccer.)

Following the departure of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons were in charge, and it appears the country was divided into seven “petty kingdoms.” (I previously hadn’t heard the term petty kingdom: an “independent realm recognizing no suzerain and controlling only a portion of the territory held by a particular ethnic group or nation.” Thankyou online encyclopaedias and dictionaries. And I love the word “suzerain.”) In 927, King Athelstan brought the whole nation under a single ruler. And England as an Anglo-Saxon place was proceeding swimmingly until those pesky Normans showed up. “1066 and all that.”

It’s odd for me to try to condense any of British history—I feel that, as an Australian, I grew up with more British history than any other kind (including, on balance, Australian). So: Battle of Hastings. War of the Roses. The Princes in the Tower. Shakespeare and Queen Bess. Charles I beheaded. Oliver Cromwell. House of Commons and House of Lords. The formation of Great Britain in 1707. And, of course the most important thing, the BBC.

Though this is an overall British fact—or in fact a Manxman fact—I’ll throw it in here. Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state of the Isle of Mann, where she also holds the official title of “Lord of Mann.”

Today’s poem is by Ted Hughes. Feminists, please don’t throw anything at me. I love Sylvia, but I also love Ted Hughes’s poetry. And of course there’s so much Ted Hughes to choose from. I thought of “The Thought-Fox,” but so did every other anthologist ever. (I appear, in the midst of this, to suddenly feel like an anthologist, the way I pour over every resource offering contemporary poems in translation…) I decided to go with one of Hughes’s animals. So: “Hawk Roosting.” And it’s nice to use a major English-language poet every so often, because I can find their work online.


Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.


—Ted Hughes