New Zealand’s semi-official poet laureate Victor Billot pens topical verse every Sunday. Today: Judith Collins
Winter is coming
A fell force marches south on Cindy’s Landing:
from north of the wall they flow, a relentless horde.
Lady Judith of Oravida rolls onwards, crushing all.
Behind her sway an eldritch army of ice zombies:
Simon the Unfortunate, lopped head carried underarm,
and Toad the Brief, eyes fixed in a thousand yard stare.
Her followers in full regalia, tattoo’d with her likeness,
daubed with cerulean war paint, hoot and screech.
They gather before the gates of the plague-ridden city;
whenst Queen Cindy mounts the ramparts to address all,
citizens and foes alike, in a last appeal.
O loyal subjects, she quavers, be kind! Let’s keep moving!
But when the Queen first speaks, Lady Judith just cackles.
F-bombs and eye rolls, head high verbal tackles.
When Her Kindness speaks again, JC says look at me!
And spins her head round in circles, demonically.
If I am crowned, Lady J proclaims, the tax cuts are on me.
The All Blacks will win. It’s time to get mean.
No, no! Slander! Unkindness! Replies the Queen, aghast.
You are four billion shillings out, yells Chancellor Grant.
But their claims are drowned by the chant of the mob,
hot-blooded, disturb’d by passions, desiring red meat.
To the walls! The invaders swarm the keep with ladders,
and all is swallow’d up by the nightmarish fog of battle.
Yet in the rear lurks Baron Luxon, hooded and obscure,
at safe reach beyond slings and arrows.
He knows a single contest does not the war make,
and waits patient for Fortune to gaze his way.
Victor Billot has previously been moved to write odes for such New Zealand luminaries as Garrick Tremain, Todd Muller, David Clark, James Shaw and Billy Te Kahika.
* Made with the support of Creative New Zealand *
