Court Painter tasked the resident studio scribe, Chatterley Genderless Pernicious Thunderbuns (ChatGPT), to craft a modern tale based on a Politico text report—transmuted into a cycle of Shakespearean sonnets, each retelling a portion of the recent chaotic Gaza Peace Summit episode as if performed on a Bard-themed karaoke night.
Presented for the reader’s pleasure: five sonnets, a diplomatic pageant in verse.
I. The Summons
From far and near they sped on hasty wing,
Those lords of state to Egypt’s sunburnt shore;
Late summons’d by a golden trumpet’s ring,
To seek peace where none had found it before.
Yet Donald who call’d them tarried still afar,
In Zion’s halls where flatterers held him long;
He prais’d their words, and linger’d for their star,
While others toil’d in waiting, weak yet strong.
Four hours crawl’d by like pilgrims in the sand,
Ere came the king whose tongue could charm or chide;
But absence wrought what presence ne’er had plann’d—
The talk was free, unmask’d of courtly pride.
Thus chance became the midwife of accord,
And silence broke the scepter of the lord.
II. The Council by the Sea
Within one chamber lock’d from worldly din,
A circle form’d of East and Western might;
Carney among them, calm of brow and chin,
Did trade in words more sharp than steel in fight.
Beside him sat Britannia’s measured heir,
And to his right Arabia’s desert son;
Across, stern Turk did stroke his jet-black hair—
The globe compressed, yet all as though made one.
No whisper’d scrolls, no aides to steer their speech,
No gilded pens to soften truths’ descent;
They spoke as men whom ruin’s flame did reach,
And sought, not praise, but earth’s beleaguer’d scent.
What six months’ pomp could scarce in shape compose,
Was born that day when protocol did doze.
III. Of Trump’s Arrival
At last Donald came—the tardy architect,
Whose walls of will outshone his kingdom’s stone;
He found the plan near whole, though he’d neglect,
And claim’d the crown for labors not his own.
Yet none reproach’d, for peace was hard to win,
And even jesters help when tempests roar;
The air grew thick with promises and spin,
As trumpets blared along the Red Sea shore.
“Behold,” quoth he, “how swiftly progress runs!”
Unknowing, or uncaring, of delay;
While those who wrought beneath the desert suns,
Smiled faintly, letting vanity have play.
For oft the gods by irony are kind—
They grant success, and leave the proud behind.
IV. The Press Excluded
But lo, no heralds told the world these deeds,
For Canada’s own scribes were bid to stay;
Their pens, once free, were fetter’d by new creeds,
That veil’d the path of truth in dusk array.
The Gallery cried foul across the land:
“What worth hath power if unseen it reigns?
Our quills must trace where statesmen set their hand,
Lest freedom fade and silence bind the chains.”
So echo’d forth the plea from ink to sky,
That light attend the halls where rulers scheme;
For democracy dies not with sword, but lie,
When access wanes and shadows choke the schemes.
O Canada, whose conscience once was clear,
Let not thy press be gagged by misplaced fear.
V. The Aftermath
And thus the tale concludes beside the sea,
Where chaos bred the order men desired;
No peace was signed, yet hope began to be,
In tempers cool’d and humbled hearts inspired.
Carney declar’d with measured voice and tone,
To heal, to guard, to succor, and to mend;
While distant nations sent their greetings shown,
In long lists read from margin unto end.
Yet still the challenge sleeps in Gaza’s night,
Where guns outshout the diplomat’s decree;
And though the stage was bathed in golden light,
The final act awaits humanity.
For peace, like dawn, delays its full release—
Politics talks of progress, yet profits more from peace.
