Richard III, Plantagenet King,
Lay under the gravelled car park floor,
Obscured by a grimy parking meter thing,
After he died in the Cousins’ War,

And beneath King’s Cross Station also unseen,
No longer on her Iceni Throne,
Rests Boudicca the Celtic Queen,
No more now than dust and bone,

Let’s go, perhaps, to Oxford street,
Or any other London road,
Where Apple Stores and mansions meet,
Where time escapes our English abode,

In this country of palaces, buses, and sheep,
Not much is more inevitable than Ozymandian sleep,

For in our tiny nation there is room,
Albeit not always very much,
For castles and chippies and Tescos and tombs,
For Shakespeare’s and Moffat’s shadows to touch,

And Shakespeare’s Globe is England’s stage,
A historically impeccable reproduction,
But step outside and you shall gauge,
The extent of Canary Wharf’s novel construction,

And see the people traversing Thames,
Hoards of harmoniously incongruous faces,
Michelles and Mohammeds and Ashas and Abrams,
Coming and going from all manner of places,

And these people, places, times, engender a rhythm,
That gives us our name, the United Kingdom.