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I walk until the headstones fall from
sight,
Though still those markers bind me to a
seat
Of cold remorse; to words upon the face
Of one especial
tomb, which plot is known
To none but those whose labour laid the
stone.
And where our dirt-downed hands chipped
marble tears,
So care-worn hearts composed the final
word.
An elegy of unaccompanied grief,
A crown of thorns
to mark the martyred
brow,
A grave-drawn loved one lying cold a-bed.
His Devil’s
cup was poisoned by a Saint.
A slave to some old pleonexic urge,
Who dreams aloud
and from this dream
proceeds
To rip the standard from its pole and drag
His kingdom
with its own confetti’d flag.
This charlatanic master of such men
As those who
live and die by other’s
quotes;
Who cannot speak first-hand a phrase of
truth
But coin for their own profit stolen words,
Has cornered
for his hobby-horse a wolf.
I bend my steps
toward the end of time,
To find along the way a tailor to
Supply his naked
frame a suit of love.
This love’s the ruling monarch of a man
Though greed’s
the traitor to his kingly
scheme,
And any man who finds the wretched throne
Above which
pendulums the sword, whose
point’s
The finest measure of its mortal truth,
Can no more
free himself from its cajole
Than Joseph in his colours from the well.
Plagued by these
ghosts whose curses are
sirens
Calling him home to be shrouded in sin,
The shadow of
their ministry will fall
Upon a body burning in the light
Of Luna in her
mephistolic mask.
But when the final kingdom’s come and gone,
This sacrifice
still gospel in its fact,
I offer up an oath to wake the dead.
And following
these promises I sleep,
Deaf to the sound of its shattering dawn.
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