Part 1 | The Ghosts of Love

On the Other Side of Death


            When the hefted sword, its hammered edge,
            so confident about its right to resist,
            entrusted with defending the people's forts from assault,
            gutters and goes out—
            the Shadow of Decay,
            read beneath the surface
            of these bodies becoming other bodies,
            hushed in his lair he lies lurking.
            His power to enchant others with his songs,
            spoken in welcome and a wealth of wrought gold,
            hides
            a mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries.
            Many are swallowed up like that,
            people doing the exact same things,
            the devil and she together—
            people who love plebiscitarian facades
            (one crumbles now, one later, but it makes no difference.)
            who
            yearn
            to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, 
            upper and lower,
            mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes;
            this same flower that smiles today,
            for all our efforts,
            tomorrow will be dying.
            The devil,
            hushed in his lair he lies lurking.
            His senators,
            their throats hoarse with cursing,
            like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower,
            gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour,
            gleaming blade slathered in blood.
            People
            desperate to get out
            woke in terror—
            the devil and she together:
            so little is our loss,
            so little is thy gain
            on the other side of death.

        
            NOTE

            "On the Other Side of Death" is a cento, or collage, poem composed of lines taken from the following sources.