I composed this poem during a sleepless night. The fragment of the poem that came to me was from Philip Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb" recording his visit to Chichester Cathedral where he had seen the tomb of a royal couple who died in the fourteenth century.
The tomb was a sculpted stone memorial effigy of the Earl of Arundel and his second wife lying side-by-side. In the poem, he observed that the snow had fallen "undated" in the intervening centuries and that a "bright litter of birdcalls strewed the same bone-littered ground." (I was impressed that he managed to insert "strewed" and "litter" into the same phrase. A litter can refer to a stretcher used to carry a sick or wounded person, and flowers can be strewn over a grave.) Philip Larkin is one of the most popular modern English poets.
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AuthorI am a Northwest artist making collages from mulberry papers stamped by hand from original images that I have carved. Archives
April 2024
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