Of crumbled chalk
And forgotten dreams:
A leper screams.
Lost limbs and
Fallen faces:
Nuns and monk’s graces
Lost to leprosy.
Condemned to the chapel:
Painful screams,
Disfiguring disease
In Eleventh Century.
A prosperous port
To Dunwich they came,
Outside Pales Dyke -The fortified ditch.
Fragments of columns,
Wind-worn capitals
And carved Caen stone:
Soulless shadows alone.
Sandstone arches
Guarding unearthly silhouettes
Of threatened and isolated lepers
Forbidden to work.
Medicinal monk-fussing ointments
Of hemlock, henbane and mandrake.
Preparing for surgery,
Opium alerts and vinegar-dabbed faces.
Herbs soothing bacteria progressing;
Curved sandstone arches
Clasping the ghost-like shadows,
Echoing the delicate gloom.
Stephanie