Church burial
It expired quietly, after a long
illness, giving up the ghost in a most
dispirited fashion. No requiem,
for it was, above all else, a low church.
Cause of death, old age, weak circulation
and modern madness; package holidays
bingo and slippery soap operas.
Pie-in-the-sky was forever grounded
as heads bowed low, in search of Kelly's eye,
or in fervent prayers for two fat ladies.
The straight and narrow conceded defeat
to broad appeals from Coronation Street.
There was, too late, a brief resurrection,
when the house of the Lord was re-christened,
DUKE'S NITE SPOT
In poster paint anointed.
Christ's blood distilled to secular spirit.
Swill, scampi, and self employed Salomes
stripped bare the vestiges of innocence
from eyes of men who never had been babes.
The Duke de-camped, leaving clear the field,
concluding at last that the battleground
of good and evil was just a bad draw.
Then, one-still -as-death-day, when drab garlands
of litter congregated loosely where
confetti had once swirling danced; and hosts
of weeds fell famished upon stony ground
The slack carcasse, creaking, grew suddenly
alive with sleek and bristling destroyers
swarming all round its ragged spine they flicked
glistening steel mandibles, and wrenched free
Flaking slate, stiff armour plate, from the dry
and brittle, cobweb smothered, nail split ribs
then gaping wounds admitted shafts of light
into its sacred, raw, and exposed heart
at this the final dismembering of
the Body of Christ's Church Everlasting.
Other scavengers, like drones, awesomely
efficient, tore out its buttressed belly
stone by dusty stone, leaving merely morsels.
Now all that remains is a blue sky, roof
enough for the humble Galilean,
and permission to build mini-mansions.