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Leper Chapel - Screams from the Past

Ghost-like stones
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

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