Two Poems

26 JUNE 1381/1977

i. North Walsham: The Fields

And he, Despenser, tried to keep hold
Of the dyer's head

As the crowd of them, gawkers
& priests, tinkers & tailors & wastrels

(Gentry, too, thinking already: reredos!
A gift for him, a

Presentiment) lurched along
With the horsecart off to the place

Of undoing, Lidster's undoing who'd heard-
Who'd heard of The Kynges

Son who'd paye for al,
The mullere who'd ygrounde smal-but

Was paying himself,
Tied by a foot with the same rope

That they'd hang him with, after
The drawing. And he

Henry Despenser, the Bishop 'Lespenser'-
miles amatus, boni pastoris mens,

For so it says on his brass-
...