The Charnel House Of The Plague Poem by David Lewis Paget

I sat all night in the charnel house
With a rag held over my face,
The smell down there was infernal
But I was guarding my wife's remains,
They'd picked her up in a wooden cart
When they'd cried, ‘Bring out your dead, '
Thrown her on top of the corpses there
With the plague marks on her head.

I followed the cart to Winson Green
Where they tipped their load in the dark,
Down in a noisome cellar, then
They would take them out to the park,
The churchyards all were full, they said,
They'd have to dig a pit,
And bury a hundred bodies there
There was no avoiding it.

I made my way to the cellar and sat,
Holding Elizabeth's hand,
Just as she'd held my hand in life
‘Til the plague swept over the land,
We'd wept together when she had felt
The swelling under her arms,
I'd vowed that I would take care of her
When freed from this life's alarms.

‘You won't go into a communal pit,
I'll see that they treat you fair, '
She smiled at me on her deathbed, then
I ran my hand through her hair,
I called my brother to make the trip
To the coffinmaker he knew,
And bid him, ‘Carry the casket back
Before the fever gets you! '

He came at dawn in a sorry state,
The fever was on his brow,
‘The casket's out in the street, ' he said,
‘The coffinmaker is down.
His wife and children are dead in there,
I grabbed the one that was free,
But once you've settled Elizabeth,
You'd better get one for me.'

We dragged Elizabeth up through the grate
And rolled her into the street,
Placed her into the coffin there
Tucked in her beautiful feet,
The lid went down, such a final sound
When she finally left my life,
As we loaded her onto a horse and dray
I cried for my poor, dead wife.

They turned us away at the cemetery,
They turned us away at the church,
They wouldn't advise us where to go,
‘You'll have to go off, and search.'
We came upon an abandoned house
And put her up in the eaves,
‘They'll never find her, ' my brother groaned
In the throes of the dread disease.

My brother died on the following day,
I left him beside the kerb,
Next to my mother and cousin Joan
They'd treated themselves with herbs,
But nothing stemmed the march of the plague
My family all but gone,
While I was immune from its deadly rays
Just me, and my father, Ron.

We walked and walked from the city square,
And sought out a country town,
We ate fresh food from the countryside
And waited the plague to go down,
I went to recover Elizabeth then,
Went back in search of my spouse,
But wandered forever the empty streets,
I couldn't remember the house!

31 December 2012