There is a man with a grave in his head
and he wanders from town to town,
singing songs of crows and death and God.
Some say he is an undertaker,
some say he is a vessel of the devil,
but they all agree that he means them harm.
There is a man with blood on his name.

A child of six finds him by the mercat cross
with a stare that chills his brittle bones.
The sun rises up with a limp
and casts his shadow long and gaunt
and fragile and black.
He offers out a smile
but it grimaces
and forms a dark, crooked sneer.
There will be death here by noon.

Church bells and raised voices
gather above the rooftops
and descend as black rain,
like tar, sticky and oily.
They have made their choice.
Weapons are gathered
and war songs penned
and faces painted blue and red.
There will be death within the hour.

A confrontation of silence and conflagration.
He sits there, still, momentarily lost
in the warning call of a fantasist
with a pen too small for his ideas.
The crowd before him swells even further,
nervous anger and shaking knives.
He stands up quick,
and the villagers twitch as a single entity.
He holds up one bony finger.
One body.
One is all he needs.
There is a bloodbath.

He sits alone surrounded by people,
blood forming patterns in the grass and gravel,
like Point de Venise.
He clicks an impressed tut
and takes his belongings off his cart.
It is too small today.
He will have to make several trips.
And all the while,
hour after hour,
day after day,
that smile will never leave his scarred face.