This poem was first published in The Herald on the morning of the Princess of Wales’s funeral, September 6, 1997.

                       DIANA

Gold-mopped woman of gazelle grace,

Goddess of hunting, who were yourself

The fatal quarry of the paparazzi dogs,

Now you will be aspic-ed in martyrdom,

Your shallows and your depths

Denied all further exploration.

~

Would-be Queen of Hearts (did that

Pretension grate on other viewer-voyeurs?),

You were also the princess of pop

Who mingled with the meretricious

And used the operating theatre as

Photo opportunity for doe-eyed concern.

~

The wounded eyes were well made-up.

And yet beneath the studied vulnerability

No doubt the real thing ached. In turn emotionally

Failed by parent, husband, lovers (till the last),

You seemed at once manipulative media star

And lost child crying for affection.

~

Perhaps all you needed was a prince’s love

To hold you to the English gentlewoman’s

Doggy, horsey, polo-watching path.

Such simple resolution was withheld.

You could rouse millions to chivalry

But not command the ultimate concern of one.

~

Still, if your acts of charity

Seemed sometimes superficial gestures

Between your latest sybaritic ploys,

You touched those deemed unclean

And hugged the maimed and dying,

And in so doing showed a courtesy and kindness

Beyond the armchair altruism of your critics.

~

The ambiguity of your motives was always,

Anyway, irrelevant to your perceived humanity.

Now from the minefield of your life,

Your unshattered image rises,

Immaculate, unassailable; at last

Queen of Hearts without equivocation.

                                         Lesley Duncan, September 1997