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Bernard Hardy: ‘Obituary’

Roger Franklin

Nov 28 2020

0 mins

Obituary

The anthropoid measure of a coffin’s space
clasps her in its shape’s embrace
as liquid seeping from necrotic cells
turns joinery into a wooden well.

Worms tangle the focus of her eyes
as they eat the blackness of her lies,
annelid casts in two bony holes
detritus blinding their sockets’ fill.

How flexibly the wind-combed grass
parts around her memorial’s carved cartouche
as it unfolds a scroll texting death’s dimensions,
the metaphysics of its stone conventions.

On another headstone a mortal span
stems bright flowers in a watering can.

Bernard Hardy

Roger Franklin

Roger Franklin

Online Editor

Roger Franklin

Online Editor

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