Whispers from a churchyard

Voices beckon me to this forlorn haunt

To reveal the perpetration of crimes.

At the crimson end, the viscous nights daunt

The burrowing of these forgotten times.

The laminated contours of thy wake

Speak of loneliness, oh country steeple.

Have thy hallowed years gone, so to forsake

The dreams of eternity of these people?

Ghoulish boughs weave a sinister lament

Perming my wet curls in the twilight wind,

The agony of Death could not relent

For those who were buried but had not sinned.

Slanted carcasses of rusty crosses

Loom over mausoleums of the past,

Recalling memories of grievous losses

Sombre obsequies and flags at half-mast.

Through scratching nails beneath this mouldy ground,

Churning the shell of their own rotten shrouds,

The Dead foster a mournful cry unbound

In the starless night of penitence clouds.

That rising lament like storm convulsion

Reiterates the sentence of neglect,

Embittered by the human revulsion

At cities of souls that they themselves wrecked.

Where are the neat chrysanthemums and sprouts,

Where is the tender hand and silver tear?

Where is the heart that could not harbour doubts

Upon the grave of its beloved dear?

Now ivy and moss shall be libations

To assuage the hopes of what once were men,

And no soul shall fight these desecrations

For darkness fell over their last amen.

Viridian epitaphs solemnly cite

The hypocrisies in flowery runes,

The allure of which is in decay and blight

Below the livid rays of distant moons.

Beloved, the years are meaningless to you

But for the leaden interim of lull.

You grind dead regrets of the life that flew

With requiems of bells, forlorn and dull.

You’ve broken the sacramental contract,

The fervent bond that gave them hope ere death,

How can you preach if the fields are so abstract,

Pernicious mockeries of their last breath?

These wild blossoms shall be my humble alms,

Lambent tokens of love, of piety.

The unfeigned words of my heart’s book of psalms

To ease our life’s greatest anxiety.

The 11th stanza is adressed to the Church itself and the Illusions of Men.