Warrior Queen, by Sue Mackrell

Boudica and Her Daughters, by Thomas Thornycroft (England) 1856-1902 (artist died in 1885, but work continued on the statue.) Photo by Paul Walter, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Warrior Queen   

I sing your praises 
Warrior Queen,
red hair badged with blood, 
mouth a howl of rage 
in blue tattooed face 
as you roared into battle 
on your chariot, 
javelin leaping 
from your hand.

Was there ever an epitaph for you?
Bards scorned the written word -
shameful not to have it by heart,
the mead hall of the Iceni destroyed.

We have only your conquerors’
story, those who 
stole your inheritance 
gang raped your daughters
flogged you to the bone. 

Tall as a man, your glance could kill,
a mass of tawny hair reaching your hips, 
voice harsh as a raven
your battle cry terrified.

Your vengeance was like the Furies. 
They say you called on Andraste,
War Goddess of the Celts
your hands rising to the heavens
in ecstatic appeal,
a sacred hare under your cloak. 

You rallied
over a thousand warriors,
you were politician, 
strategist, tactician, 
Queen of the Celts 

At the last
Eighty thousand of the enemy fell,
 for the loss of only four hundred Romans
so Tacitus tells us.

channelled into chaos 
by the Roman war machine. 

He said you took poison. 
You probably did.

You were never going to paraded 
through the streets of Rome
enslaved and shamed.
 
What would you have thought 
of your statue high over London, 
icon of the British Empire 
a layer of red scorched earth 
deep under your chariot wheels?

Sue Mackrell 

Sue Mackrell is a grandmother, gardener, poet and writer from Leicester, UK who loves art in all its forms.  Many of her poems, short stories and non-fiction historical pieces have been published online and in print, including in Agenda Poetry, Bloody Amazing, (Dragon Yaffle) and currently in Whirlagust (Yaffle) and The Dawntreader (Indigo Dreams.) Highlights have been having her poems displayed in Ladies’ toilets in Leicester as part of a Wee Poems project and winning an Archaeology Festival Haiku prize – the most lucrative 17 syllables of her career! She is extremely proud to have poems already in The Ekphrastic Review  

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