Copper Brown

And when it was worn smooth, a Victorian bun
with all its features drowned, obliterate,
a kind of pessary or wafer, without date
or motto, when it could hardly hurt anyone,
under a garden clod or in a forgotten tin
along with buttons, old stamps, bits of lace,
with its horrendous apology for a face,
a half-cock ghost next to a rusty pin,
it still disturbed, if only for the hands
you knew had touched it once, its princely sum
part of a historical continuum
that would eventually present its strict demands,
when it would stand there pounding at your door
like death in the simple annals of the poor.

From An English Apocalypse, 2001