S__ and I step from summer-holiday
sun into cool twilight of church,
its ancient fusty silence broken
by the clack of our sandals on flagstone
as we down-aisle to the apse
where, under the glass-eyed gaze
of confectionery-wrapper apostles,
we find a good one. With our sleeves
we brush dust off the monumental
brass of the knight hic iacet corpus
and hic etiam iacet his good lady.
Mum hands us sheets
of butcher’s paper and we hunch
on hassocks over them
as if at prayer, heelball and bronze
crayons in our hands.
For an hour nothing
but the furious trundle of wax
on paper on latten on limestone
on our knees, each pass
darkening the heraldry of the dead.
–
Ben Egerton is a poet and lecturer from Wellington, New Zealand, where he teaches in the Faculty of Education at Victoria University, and where he spends a lot of time running up and down mountains. Ben’s poetry has been published in various journals in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and at home in New Zealand.