Doing My Bit for Pomp and Pageantry

(for John Blanc, described as the Black Tudor, an equestrian trumpeter at the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. He is depicted among the King’s entourage on the royal Westminster Tournament Roll.)

In Norman French the name has a ring that’s nice.
Not John Blanke, John Blanc, to be precise.

Shall we say a Tudor gentleman of colour?
Or one who brought colour to the Tudor court?
What’s in a name leaves ample room to ponder
for am I not John White the Black
and Black John White rolled into one turban?

In days when the Henrys ruled the royal roost
and the King himself took to the manly joust
I hailed the thrust of lance with trumpet blast.
I, the equestrian exotic of the retinue,
blowing for every pence of my shillings’ due.

Thus the North African winds had followed me
to an England known both as Olde and Merry.
Yes, I whose Moorish skin echoed midnight’s key,
surveyed from a turban’s rainbow my adopted Albion.
And to those white cliffs my lips put forth their clarion.

Not quite a fanfare for diversity.
Simply doing my bit for pomp and pageantry.
Yet when history’s footnotes begin to grow more bold
and the heart’s tapestry unrolls its spectrum,
hear again my trumpet’s dark riffs rising out of vellum.