The Man in the Queen's Room

By shadowed gate and garden wall,

He scaled the palace deep,

Past guards who stood too still to call,

While London lay in sleep.

No gun, no crown, no cause to cheer—

No banner raised or scheme—

Just breath and beer and buzzing fear,

And fragments of a dream.

He wandered halls of polished stone,

Where portraits watched like spies,

And tiptoed through that regal zone

With wide and hungered eyes.

A servant’s desk, a royal chair—

He passed through sacred gloom,

Until he found her waiting there

Inside her silent room.

The Queen, she woke without a scream,

And met him eye to eye—

A sovereign locked inside a dream

Where no one heard her cry.

He spoke of love and hurt and sons,

Of Margaret and the press,

Of voices loud as palace guns,

Of pain he could not dress.

She calmed him not with sword or law,

But with a mother’s grace,

Until the guards, at last, in awe,

Beheld that haunted face.

They took him out; the papers ran—

“A drunk, a fool, a clown!”

But kings may fall and queens may stand

While walls still let men down.