Sarah White
The Lewis Chess Queen in the British Museum
I won’t see her again—my Queen.
She’s squarely seated on her throne.
She and the chair were made from one
severely aching walrus tooth. I think,
from the dire look upon her face,
it’s aching still. She needs a pill to kill
the pain. How ill she is!
I won’t see her again—I, her subject,
she, my seated sovereign queen
with anguished face in hand
and look of true distress.
I must confess, it’s hard to see the pained
expression on the visage of my queen.
In another life, before her reign
began, before she moved
to Western Europe as a wife,
the Mate and consort of the King,
she was a kind of Grand vizir
(wazir in Arabic) with other moves and less
to fret about. For worse or better, she
was transferred from the battlefield
where she was like the other pieces,
playing games as royal right hand
man, she then became the piece
whose Christian duty was to see
to her great husband’s safety.
What a headache! What a toothache!
Get the poor woman out of here!
Later centuries saw her powers
become enormous and a chorus
of world champions heaped
the Queen with praises for her leaps,
her powers, her sweeps, but—woe is she—
by then this Queen was far away from any play
and, as a chess piece, decommissioned,
doomed to star in her own room
of good Great Britain’s great Museum.
If I could travel, I would take
you there to see her with all her weight
upon the throne, her faithful face,
her Great Toothache.
—
https://www.chessbaron.com/chess-BC3001.htm
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