The Footnote
23-24 October 1642
Sir Adrian Scrope
deserves the footnote
he always gets:
cut down at smokefall
on the field at Edgehill,
found & stripped
according to custom,
that night the frost
stanches his bleeding;
at dawn he wakes
starved with cold
in a mass of bodies —
nobles, tapsters —
all of them naked,
no way to know
who’s who, which which,
so he pulls a corpse
or three about him
as you might tug
your blanket up
about your ears,
roll over cosy in
your bed to face
the wall night-night —