Crosshatching the Chapter House
Worcester Cathedral
There's no escape from the hob-nailed boots,
the shovels and picks, from iron slag or mortar bands,
for the wishbone in the rib fence.
Soon, too soon, all your bones are slipped from your clay coop
carefully wrapped; waiting in line
till X-rays lend an eye to fix you.
You will be studied at will; held;
radio-carbon-dated; filed;
used to flesh out a program
for a recording contract.
Just your bones. Not your voices.
Did you sing ad lib in your lovely lope, reel, roll, or lone stomp?
Silently rave, unheard underground, at an old abbot
whispering through his gat-toothed gums?
Your relicts, now our runes, shall we then read you?
Speak you?
Wind you round with words?
Possess you?
Make of you what we will,
replaced, you crosshatch the underfloor again
- laywomen, laychildren, laymen, - while we cross and
re-cross the Chapter House on top of you.
When our bones burn, yours remain.
And all this, too, will pass.
the shovels and picks, from iron slag or mortar bands,
for the wishbone in the rib fence.
Soon, too soon, all your bones are slipped from your clay coop
carefully wrapped; waiting in line
till X-rays lend an eye to fix you.
You will be studied at will; held;
radio-carbon-dated; filed;
used to flesh out a program
for a recording contract.
Just your bones. Not your voices.
Did you sing ad lib in your lovely lope, reel, roll, or lone stomp?
Silently rave, unheard underground, at an old abbot
whispering through his gat-toothed gums?
Your relicts, now our runes, shall we then read you?
Speak you?
Wind you round with words?
Possess you?
Make of you what we will,
replaced, you crosshatch the underfloor again
- laywomen, laychildren, laymen, - while we cross and
re-cross the Chapter House on top of you.
When our bones burn, yours remain.
And all this, too, will pass.
Page(s) 19
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