Wears The Farcical Wig

There is a third tier to the Legal debate,
an unassailable tower of will-sapping
power, a magister-less pontificate who
is judge and jury and justicate.

No mundaneness of referee, this is a
vetting of unequivocal majesty, fictionally
free of baited adversarial bedlam and
the principled bloodletting of advocates.

Approved by peers and elected by seers
of long and legally sanctioned behest,
a figure who wears the farcical wig, argued,
gesticulated for years from the barristers’ pit,

gathered there scars – criterion defaulted
hors de combat, a bolter to sit on The Bench.
Then raised by an impregnable institution
dignified in didactic silence.

This elevation defeats categorisation in an
intimacy of comfit truth and censored tales
untold, lips sealed by Practice, hindrance-
free to dispense Law as he sees it, and sees fit.

So bully your lawyers, proctors, solicitors,
barristers, bailiffs, advisors, practitioners,
the Judge is the man on whom all surmises –
the master of ceremony and legal disguises.
© I.D. Carswell 2006