the disease goes on that was once life
until the eyes and face were wasted
the sockets sunken and ribs are rife
rasped out of rock below - alabastered
on top - while issue was ever extinct
from that bad body - the shroud disclosing
a defecation of skin succinct
and death disarmed from the prayer’s posing -
at Fyfield decay has life of its own
no mantis rises save the peeled-off husks
from pub corpse copse closures - bus-stops alone
stay open to catch the motorway’s gusts
as breeze cleans the village of cankered hide -
go softly Golafre - you worm inside
Blackwells
Oxford
29 October 2018
Today being my 57th birthday, I treated myself to a memento mori at the village of Fyfield ( pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable), by going to the church of St Nicholas to see the extraordinary cadaver effigy of Sir John Golafre (d. 1442).
This is a double-decker affair of the knight resplendent on the top deck, and an exposed corpse underneath on the floor, as if a body were thrown down a drain, a fosse, in place of a Roman lapis manalis, a plughole on the Underworld.
Sir John Golafre served four kings, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI, and married three wives by whom he had no issue at all. He was Henry V’s Receiver General of Occupied France 1418-19, and he commissioned the building of the bridge at Abingdon.
Of course, as it was Monday, the village was more closed than even usual. “Prayer” is two syllables, pray-er, not one syllable. It’s the noun for one who prays.