In James Joyce's Ulysses, Irishman Buck Mulligan puts on a ludicrous cockney accent and dances around singing:
O, won't we have a merry time
Drinking whisky, beer and wine
On coronation
Coronation day?
O, won't we have a merry time
On coronation day?
The question mark only exaggerates the absurdity of it all.
James Joyce, the Nobel laureate novelist, wrote to slip the knot of history, to escape the straitjacket of empire and, yes, even of Irishness. To go in search, as he wrote, of the unconstructed conscience of my race.
For the characters in Joyce's great novel — and for people like me — absurdity may be the only logical, sane response to the spectacle of the coronation of King Charles III.
Taking the coronation seriously only risks becoming complicit in this antediluvian ritual.
A 74-year-old man will finally inherit the crown of a faded empire. His own family is not united, let alone his country.
Charles will still reign over 15 nations, among them St Lucia, Tuvalu, Grenada, Canada and, of course, steadfast Australia.
The "republican" Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be among those pledging his allegiance.
To seal it all, the new King will be anointed with holy oil. This man is apparently a gift from God.
"O, won't we have a merry time."
The war on our land never ended
Yes, mockery may be the best medicine.
Dare not think about this too much. Because then this illusion shatters. We would have to think of the coronation regalia and the crown of stolen jewels.
The stolen land. The genocide. The brutality.
I would think about the declaration of martial law on my people, the Wiradjuri — 200 years ago next year — in the name of the crown.
Last week I travelled to Bathurst to meet with my elders and ponder how — or if — we mark this war on our land; as they reminded me, not frontier war, but homeland war. Our fight to resist invasion.
At the time the conflict was described as an "exterminating war". But we are still here.
To my people, the war has never ended. Last week my elders asked, where is the ceasefire? Where is the treaty?
To take this coronation seriously would be to try to make sense of an Australian prime minister pledging his allegiance to a crown that tried to exterminate my people.
As a Christian, how do I take this seriously? Holy oil? Consecration? Does God bless empire?
There is more God in a ghost gum, in a riverbed, in the birdsong of my country.
But this is monarchy that has always fashioned God in its image. That believed in the divine right of King; the doctrine of discovery that meant a land not occupied by a "Christian" monarch was free for the taking.
Some have suggested this week that this coronation is a deeply religious ceremony.
Imagine: Christ, a brown skinned man of suffering and sorrows. A man under occupation. A man persecuted and murdered by empire now invoked in a ceremony to crown a white king of empire.
Is this my Christ? The Christ who promised to bring a sword against injustice? The Christ who told us what you do the least of thee you do to me?
The Christ who cried out, why God had forsaken him?
The old white empire gathers dust
This is where he ends up in a lavish ceremony crowning a white king with the holy oil of God.
"O, won't we have a merry time."
There is a danger of investing too much in this.
This week, Indigenous peoples around the world have asked the new King for an apology. Understandable.
But why? It is not going to happen, for one thing. If it did, what would it mean?
Same for the republic. Supporters have seized the moment to push their cause. But what would a republic be but another name for Australia?
The same Australia that can't bring peace to the legacy of the wars of the crown on our country. Republic is something we need to earn.
To think of this too seriously is to lend this ceremony far too much weight. It is over anyway.
In the 21st century the old white empires gather dust. History's tombs are opened and the ghosts of those trampled under empire are haunting us.
The certainties of whiteness and power that Queen Elizabeth II was born into no longer hold.
The coronation is a celebration of the past. It is more commemoration — there is no future in it.
This sorry spectacle is meaningless
The Queen's death mattered. Personally, I felt it profoundly. The wounds of our history were torn open.
I felt betrayed by a nation that mourned her death with barely a word for the deaths of my people under her crown, under her rule.
I was confronted with the question: what do I do with my history? In the words of philosopher Jacques Derrida, do I taste the bread of apocalypse in my mouth?
I wrote a book about it, published last week. I worked through anger, through grief — to love and joy and the hope of my ancestors, our language our kinship, our fierce faith and unrelenting pursuit of justice.
And I sat by the peace of my river, I let it go.
So, this sorry spectacle — this coronation — is meaningless. I certainly won't be trapped in it. I won't give it anything more that the spectacle it is.
"O, won't we have a merry time."
What matters? Surely, to James Joyce, it is how we find each other. Ulysses's is the journey of people — everyday people — in one day to make the journey from the self to all.
But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.
What? Says Alf.
Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.
—Ulysses
Stan Grant is presenter of Q+A on Mondays at 9.35pm and the ABC's international affairs analyst. His new book, The Queen is Dead, is out now.
