Through slick earth and boggy roke,
The mold and moss eulogize
In shoddy counterpoint;
She hears their hymns,
Finds them beautiful but senseless.
A corpse-clothed commute cross
A soul-sodden sidewalk,
Rough breath from a chest drained of vigor;
Her feet fall heavy,
Heart fleeting slowly, stepwise.
They speak, she thinks, in dreams and smoke,
By song too foul to sympathize,
Of blight and black and mourning loss
She composed,
The sound now hurts to listen.
Mottled wings and slushy boils
Discharging out of tune,
A fungal home
For death and her children.
