NOT FAR

Not far from Allum Chine
the dying come to dine.
There's fish, then second course
of mutton and mint sauce
with apple crumble next.
They're grey and undersexed,
the afters of life's dish:
and scales of men, not fish,
break off and flutter down
from brow or balding crown;
new-minted squamish skin
snows on the sauce, sinks in.
Bones crumbling like school chalk,
they cling to nature's stalk;
skin, apple-puckered, sore,
hangs loose about the core