Places you’ve walked by all your life,
the things you’ve missed
and taken for granted.
Windows buried, their arches
showing above ground,
what we may call Early English,
disguised by brick and tarmac –
the layers of untold history:
a million stories lost in the retelling
copyright Francis Barker 2020
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Outside I sensed you, just a little warmth in the wind, perhaps a whisper of something said in a distant age - your rage against time. You are all around us some say, looking for a host, a creed I won't subscribe to in my antediluvian mind
copyright Francis Barker 2020
It's said you'll return I am ready to greet you I have seen your face
copyright Francis Barker 2020
The car parked marked with an R, as if your spirit had hovered for half a millenium to mark the deconsecrated spot. A few inches either side and you may have been lost forever, though there was little chance of that, so precisely did you engage with the living, the aggrieved who wished to dig up your true reputation with those poignant bones. The sight of that curved spine, it touched our hearts, wincing at the thought of you holding a sword and swinging it, yet swing it you did to save your country, your soul. The wounds so clear, graphically revealed the ignominy of your passing, the blood lust and hate of those thrusting at the legally occupied throne. History is just a story, after all, to which most of us consent, but I think of you often, Richard, the bloody white rose cut too soon on a dark August day.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Ciscography 