Our senses fashion effigies
Of a dead past, useless as guides
Where strict finality resides.  
Mute phantoms drowned in icy seas.  
But halved funereal diptychs show
Reflections of the things to be.  
The not yet displayed in symmetry,
A future mirrored long ago.

The strongest passions, joy and sorrow
Contract the feelings like a vice,
A solid block no word can slice,
As lead today, and lead tomorrow.
The thicker humors have congealed.
Water alone can spurt and run,
Too light to join that unison
When bliss and sadness have annealed.  
Though salted, tears can trickle down,
So fluid in comparison
To what calamity has stung.  
So grieve, repent, blame, weep, or clown,  
And breath is borrowed from the air,
And words but clipped and scripted breath.  
Can grief pronounce a shibboleth,
Or rapture limn what’s past compare?

The boy-king wanted to incinerate
A fell and meretricious thryrus.  
His grandfather would venerate
The same staff, terrified of curses.  
His mother’d slandered the drunk god,
But regretting feckless blasphemy
She counseled them to spare the rod,
Until they heard the divine decree.  
Once the summoned prophet had appeared,  
Blind, and clad in a frayed, goatskin cloak,  
The monarch sputtered “It’s cursed, weird,
And wrong, burn it down to ash and smoke!”
The former monarch begged, “Appease
Bromius with primeval rite,  
A lord who smites his enemies
A lord too terrible to fight.”
The daughter next, “His worshipers
Run mad, and slaughter their own kin,
Even children.   The god massacres
Those who dispute his origin”
The prophet lifted up the staff
And tore the ivy from its tip.  
“Rites, massacres, don’t make me laugh,
And immolation’s sponsorship.”
He swung the staff to test its heft,
And said, “I need a walking stick,  
The drunkard has no bacchics left,
****** the goatish lunatic.”
At this, the grandfather turned pale,
And the repentant mother winced.  
Matched severity cannot avail
If fear and butchery convinced.  
A proverb soothes the quondam king
And the dowager, “He frightens you,  
But moderation in each thing,
And that in moderation too.”

Our undercroft had housed our dead
Unseen, in gloomy sepulture.  
But pagan chieftains much prefer
Barrows, where height can show instead.  
And the busier departments need
Those lowest levels for their work.
Glib passers-by avoid that murk,
And absent bosses don’t impede.      
Ensconsed where corpses decomposed,
Those in cubicles will thrive, unvexed,
And never taken from their desks,
They’ll finish the great work imposed.  
Interrers from a raucous age
Buried their kings and queens in mounds.
Since robbers filch, and greed abounds,
The wise entombed their heritage.  
Sarcophaguses, then the norm,  
Are too chilly for a comfy bed.  
The dawn should kiss those lids of lead,
To heat what blankets cannot warm.
Rather than burying in hills,
Top those barrows with their occupants.  
These somber monuments enhance
What would be dowdy domiciles.  
Coffins as cenotaphs and plaques,
Allow the dead to bask in sun,
And feel what veneration’s done.  
Hilltops make the best catafalques.

In mainland meadows, flowers tempt,
Yet spurn those animals they tease,
Except caprificating bees.  
Here, whatever’s edible’s unkempt.  

There is an isle more fortunate
Where nettles sow chrysanthemums,
And farming isn’t wearisome,  
And where what tempts must satiate.

Clacking belongs to hollow shells,
And echoes stilled, and tongueless bells.
Toys are made flimsier than tools,
And sloth is banished from the schools.  
When clacking’s ceased, adults relax.  
Childhood is hardship and attacks.

A hungry alphabet will flock
One word to several things.  
Taut meanings have diverged
From verbal hankerings.