Enter me now for you could not, then, pass
through my gaping maw to stony carapace
and see, between my ribs of mullioned glass,
fields and forests, queaches, hedges, hollows
conspiring to be green. Or glimpse the stag,
head nobly raised, keen to sound, who follows
late the herd that flees the bowman’s arrow.
Here, young game-birds rise, and snuffling wild boar
root in leaf-mould mire husked with carcasses
decaying on a musty, fern-mat floor.

Now, traffic hums around this broad estate,
though history’s locked within these ancient stones.
On vanished floors and dark, imagined spaces
my ghosts remain to echo through my bones.
Can you hear the voices, music, laughter,
the poets reciting verses of their own,
or glimpse a rope of pearls, a flash of gems
adorning nobles, kings and flame-haired queen
as they pass still on stairs and galleries
swished in silks and satins, lace and velveteen?

Perhaps it’s just the keening wind that breathes
within my frame, the coruscating lights
just a sun and moon’s deceiving. But cleaved
to me in memory is Cowdray’s past,
dark-shadowed by a fire and water curse.
Three drowned, and I was burned, yet still outlast
the passing of the centuries. Heartless,
flame-gutted, yet my heritage I share
So enter me now, for you could not then,
and may not pass this ruined place again.

© Jacqui Rochford
2/11/08

_____________________________

Cowdray, red-hued in memory and stone
Wraps itself in mists: and dreams
Of years spent all alone.

It wasn’t always so, for monarchs came
And hunted on the fertile land
The myriad game.

Skeletal windows once looked and saw
Ladies in their gowns
Dancing on the flag-stone floor.

Gentlemen, inquisitive, could never really tell
Which Viscount was summoned
By Protestant or Popish bell.

So stands the only witness to a thousand tales or more,
An owl the nightly visitor
And a mouse on the leaf-strewn floor.

©Wendy Trafford, 2008