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“Killed by the fall of a bell”

So young to lie in the sodden dark.
It returns to me at intervals -
The boy’s small plaque, by the dripping walls
Serving as solitary mark.

Up in the lofty four-tiered tower
Hang six bronze bells in the key of C:
Half a millennium’s din and clamour,
Sonorous chiming anvil power
(Collegiate Church of the Trinity)
Hard-falling as a blacksmith’s hammer.

Oh how they’d preach in their earlier day,
John Carpenter, Provost of Oriel,
Chancellors Richard de Bury and Mellon,
Westbury magnates holding sway -
De Trillek, de Briane, to friar and felon
Doling out doctrine, sentence and shriving
And all to the voice of a bell.

William Colston, now past driving
His retching and starving spoils of abduction,
Lies in proud state by the central aisle
Never apprised of his soul’s destruction,
Old looter of lives -
For all his high and respectable causes.
The knowing tourist lolls and pauses,
Imagines the skull beneath
In its frippery of death
Frozen in a philanthropic smile.

I picture parents hunched in grief
While the Rudhall bell, old bragging thief,
Is soon re-hung, with the boy yet lying
Under the rain in his pointless dying.

Well, peace attend him
In these latter days.
Gold leaves befriend him
Where Autumn gusts flurry
Past his quiet ways:
It may be that in his echoing dell
Away from the ages’ hurry
He prefers his mixed company
To our uprooted tree;
Yet the question stays
To confront our days:
Why the Founder thought it well
That one in his prime
Should be ripped from time
And that by the fall of a bell!

© Colin Bailey, October 2009