An Arundel Tomb Revisited
                                           ~  a response to Philip Larkin

Spooning, pillows blur our faces,
like dead aristocrats in stone.
Now quiet, did they laugh and moan
as jointed limbs and stiffened flesh
were freed like ours from clothes and laces,
when in life their love was fresh?

If we, like them, would lie so long,
after cock and sun had risen,
as tangled sheets became a prison:
for us a cover, theirs a shroud.
This effigy will long prolong
their touch whose marble flesh is proud.

What sculptor would erect our bones
in monumental size and grace,
when we have passed without a trace,
with little pugs beneath our feet,
a Viking sign, while time atones
our sins, we curse and then repeat.

The rigid faithfulness we see
in them, in us was all misspent,
who could not speak the word or meant
the truth, as hand would fit a glove --
our bodies spurned fidelity.
Will what survives of us be love? 

Royal Rhodes

If you have any thoughts about this poem, Royal Rhodes  would be pleased to hear them