Servus Servorum Dei Poem by Gwilym Williams

By candle-light
moon-visaged and sedulous
in a deserted scriptorium
amid the dusty scrolls
there works alone a ghostly monk,
sedition with scrivener's palsy,
scratching his sempiternal script
with a dry quill
onto the pitted parchment,
senza sestertius.
May his shadow never grow less.

In midnight's fog
scullion soldiers work in stony silence
to the clanking of spades
and the shaking of shackles.

At sunrise the sharp-faced sexton
will toll the bell.
Servus servorum dei.