The Recalcitrant Hand Poem by David Lewis Paget

They put me in charge of the churchyard,
And said, ‘mow between the graves, '
The weeds out there were atrocious
Grew in lumps, and clumps and waves,
They tangled up in the mower blades
And they shut the motor down,
So I had to use the garden shears
As I knelt upon the ground.

They covered some of the headstones, so
I had to rake them clear,
Spent half of my time sat reading them,
The date, the time of year,
The ground had given away on some,
Had fallen into a hole,
Wherever the coffin lids had caved
On some benighted soul.

The nights were coming on early so
I laboured into the dark,
Just by the light of a spirit lamp
That I'd borrowed from the park,
At length I came on a sunken grave
And I pulled the weeds aside,
To see the shape of a bony hand,
With the shock, I almost died.

The hand came up through the stoney earth
And it pointed to the sky,
With no flesh left on the fingers, yet
It seemed to question ‘Why? '
It still belonged to the corpse below
But had tried to get away,
Out of the dark of doom and gloom
And into the light of day.

The name on the grave was ‘Clarabelle'
And, 'She of the evil eye,
She hexed the cattle in Fingal's Dell
And the swine, while passing by,
They hung her high on a willow tree
When she pointed at Belle Raye,
Who choked, then withered and sighed, was dead,
And all in a single day.'

The hand had twitched, I couldn't resist
As I sat and watched it there,
I reached on out and I seized the wrist
And I felt some strange despair,
The hand was warm, and was then full-fleshed
As a shape rose from the ground,
That held me tight in the darkening light
With the hand that I had found.

I heard the rattle of death as she
Had tried to clear each lung,
Full of the body's liquid waste
That had formed when she was hung.
I heard a croak, and the words she spoke
As she glared into my face,
‘I might be saved from my early grave,
But you'll have to take my place.'

Whatever power it was she had
It dissolved and turned to sand,
The moment I pulled away from her
And I let go of her hand.
She didn't speak, but let out a shriek
As she slid back in the grave,
So I'll never know if she heard below:
‘You're much too bad to save! '

11 July 2017