BY AVELLINA BALESTRI

Charles and Oliver, headless now,

Rejected by the modern mind

That find their souls too stubborn,

Their rules too ruthless,

Their contest without consequence,

For they refused to compromise

Whatever point they seized upon,

And now the world is full weary

Of raging for the right,

Or daring to suggest

That such a thing exists.

Perhaps neither was fully right,

Nor fully wrong, tragic irony,

But their stars burned bright

In British skies, for they believed

In something higher than themselves,

And bowed to that which was ordained

By God, before the world began:

That Babylon should fall,

And the long defeat be fought.

God will, by things that are naught,

Bring to naught things that are!

We might count them lucky

To have lived and died contending

For an incorruptible crown,

Especially now,

In our age of prosperity

When purpose eludes us.

We wish not to remember

What we were told to remember,

That ominous word before the ax fell

Upon a stiff-necked, saintly Stuart,

Wearing two shirts to avoid shivering,

Stretching forth his hands like Christ

To signal the strike;

Yes, that word spelled by splattered ink

Mixed with the strangest laugh

Of a prankster Puritan, warts and all,

Famed for slaughter on campaign

(When hard-pressed, he proved merciless)

And snowball fights with his servants

(When at ease, he loved merriment.)

Palace paintings are auctioned off,

While his wife’s cows graze in royal fields.

The law lies a-bleeding

To be bound up again

With a military sash,

The same color as the cloths

Sopping up blood at Whitehall.

We conveniently forget

We once had fiercer bosoms,

Beating with fanatical blood,

Spilled in scarlet civil wars

Betwixt this king lighting candles,

Standing upon divine prerogative,

And this commoner quoting psalms,

Casting down democracy’s gavel,

Good Christians, both, one high, one low

In liturgy and artistry,

Good husbands, both, in bed and board,

To Maria and Elizabeth,

Good fathers, both, with bountiful broods,

Playing games, making jests,

One loving art, the other loving music,

Determined to do justice, in their own way,

Curbed by human failing

And a dim glass.

Neither of their Camelots could last

As they envisioned them,

Built upon the sands of mortal striving,

But they strove all the same,

One with a stilting stammer

And the other with dreadful dreams.

The Cross was pressed into them,

Both, marred by imperfection,

Burning them like a brand,

Leaving them bloodstained

And emboldened

To strike a blow…

Or receive it.

The King suffered the strike first,

His life cut off with his head;

But Cromwell succumbed on a sick bed,

Only to be disinterred and dismembered.

We are not a kind race, any amongst us;

We are quick to judge

And do that very thing

We claimed that we abhorred.

We have not changed in temperament

Through history’s tempest;

All we can hope to do now

Is that which they did, when death came

Upon the King and the Lord Protector:

Beg that God forgive our sins,

And our enemies,

For they are God’s people too.

In this, they won the victory,

And give us cause to say of them,

“Hail to thee, thou strong ones!”

Yes, perhaps the Headless Ones 

Are watching us now,

Arm-in-arm,

Old injuries absolved,

Perplexed by their prodigal posterity,

But praying we may turn again

Before we, too, depart.