Ward Kelley -- A Man and His Poetry

*Saint Cuthbert at the Millennium*
	The picks and sharpened sticks the gaunt laborers wield to tug and pry the burdensome, thirsty dirt above your coffin appear as such primitive tools to disinter your holy, relic corpse . . . one might gasp at the poor civilization you sainted back then in the year before the world turned 1000. These picks, lit by animal fat wicks burning in filthy oil bowls, waver in the uncertain light, but might shine a winking clue, there above your casket, as to how some wonderer a thousand years after my own day might ponder my archaic word processor . . . a poor stick scratching out words in this backward age of ours.
	Saint Cuthbert (c.635-687) was an English monk, hermit, and bishop of Lindisfarne. When Christians who were regarded as saints during their own lifetimes died in the Middle Ages, the custom was to bury them in an earth grave so that the flesh might rot and the bones could be raised, wrapped in silks, then placed in a shrine. In 698 Cuthbert’s body was exhumed but was found to be incorrupt, a further sign of sainthood. His body was moved again in 875 to hide it from Norse raids; around 1000, his remains were again dug up, then enshrined at Durham; in 1104 he was moved to a new shrine behind the high altar of Durham cathedral, and again his body’s incorruption was verified. In the 16th century, Henry VIII’s officials were moved by the intact body, and allowed it to stay in the shrine. Cuthbert was last exhumed in 1828.


Design by Holly S. Hollan The Publisher's Editor Company