Poem of the Month

*

Mrs Getty Lies in State in the Corinium Museum

A fair likeness, though in life

her face was never tallow pale

but blushed from summer sun or,

sitting by winter hearth,

flushed with mead-warmth,

fireside tales, companionship.

*

Now visitors keep their voices hushed.

Sound ebbs and flows as, phantom-like,

they drift through galleries of time until they see,

with sharp surprise, her mocked-up tomb,

her body robed in madder red,

her cloak stained blue with woad.

Intrusive eyes inspect her jewels

gleaming in the crimson gloom.

*

At close of day, the doors lock out the living.

Silence turns museum into mausoleum.

She looks serene but lies here wakeful,

feels again the trowel-scrape on bone,

the soft brush swishing soil from skull,

fingers probing spine and pelvis,

relives the shock of resurrection.

*

In the grief-dark hour

before slave women with mop and broom

announce a new day dawning,

she wonders on the wyrd

that exiled her from her earthen home,

bestowed on her another woman’s name,

gave her this waxen after-life.

By Iris Anne Lewis

*

Note: In 1985 archaeologists working in Lechlade excavated the grave of a high status Anglo-Saxon woman buried with rich grave goods. They nick-named her ‘Mrs Getty’. Afer expert reconstruction of her head, ‘Mrs Getty’ is now exhibited in a replica grave in the Corinium Museum.