I discovered a few years back that the grounds of Gage Park in my hometown sadly conceal hundreds of unmarked graves that still remain, to this day (only after the tombs had been cleared to make room for the prosperous Victorian Gage family). I purposely strolled the grounds in 2016 just for this poem.
____________________
Perhaps below me here was the veiny hand that'd sadly stiffened like a sodden turnip farmer's thumb, quite likely a choleraic girl’s last hold on life; and a shape of unaired flounces of she who's veiled by some dense hedge, or the soiled hips, too, of an overwrought mam who did not die of drink- it's these who stir below me in the Park (and not so much either as a carved letter tooled skilfully to look like angel lips or something very uncial) I think I'll wade among more than one of the many hundreds blurred & sinking like all the trodden, even in death And of those sinking below me still I think there may be: a shrill blowsy dress and dad who had always lain rather pat, with her & dead child known only by shape, of course
(2016)
Commentaires