The Roman Museum Characters Poem by Richard George

Ripe as fish-gut sauce
they regaled my baby face;
Charles, with his Hogarth
balloon of bulge and half
double-barrel he'd aborted there,
Nick the beer-goblin.
'Get a proper job! ' they joked.
But now they're derelict;
Nick in the testudo
for Scotch at Asda, lowering
his patina of shame
and hepatitis, Charles leaner
in his heart's Sebastopol.
They trusted in the past
to look after them, curators
of their own anni mirabiles,
destined for a Goth girl
in 3027,
shaving bare their skulls
in a tented field. Males. A date.
Museums set things on thrones
and make serfs of people.