The Heart of Thomas Hardy

The heart of Thomas Hardy flew out of Stinsford churchyard

A little thumping fig, it rocketed over the elm trees.

Lighter than air it flew straight to where its Creator

Waited in golden nimbus, just as in eighteen sixty,

Hardman and son of Brum had depicted Him in the chancel.

Slowly out of the grass, slitting the mounds in the centre

Riving apart the roots, rose the new covered corpses

Tess and Jude and His Worship, various unmarried mothers,

Woodmen, cutters of turf, adulterers, church restorers,

Turning aside the stones thump on the upturned churchyard.

Soaring over the elm trees slower than Thomas Hardy,

Weighted down with a Conscience, now for the first time fleshly

Taking form as a growth hung from the feet like a sponge-bag.

There, in the heart of the nimbus, twittered the heart of Hardy

There, on the edge of the nimbus, slowly revolved the corpses

Radiating around the twittering heart of Hardy,

Slowly started to turn in the light of their own Creator

Died away in the night as frost will blacken a dahlia.