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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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Alder Carr, Crichton

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Leper Chapel - Mosaics of Time

Mudstone mosaics and jumbled fractures - an uneven puzzle waiting; holy stone with leper marks, dotted and spotted black. Ever expanding lichen rings with double oil-spotted rainbow; angular rust-like stains Testing the presence of time. Clenched into cracks Of weathered rocks and broken messages; scarlet snapdragons trailing their cardinal stems. Damp buttress of moss clinging, Festooning the flint; ink spots, stone measles, proud thistle commanding the base. Random yet structured, closely inter-twined cobwebs Fastened carefully to parched and pocketed stones. Chaotic yet ordered toad-like grotesque within; marking essences of devoted and hidden faces. Picture flints grinning their caramel coffee smiles amongst Anglian crags, embracing their forgotten cousins. Stephanie To see the inspiration for this poem and hear it being narrated at the remains of the Leper Chapel, Dunwich, visit this page from our Chronicles of Greyfriars project website.
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