II. A Litany for the Unburied

The soil is a mouth that has forgotten to swallow, In the garden of grief where the statues are hollow. The rain is not water, but mercury and bile, Streaking the faces of the ghosts in the aisle. We gather in rows where the grass will not grow, To sing to the things rotting softly below.

“Rise,” says the wind, with a voice like a blade, “For the debt of the dirt is a debt never paid.” The fingers of hemlock reach out for the hem, Of the spirits who find that the light is not them. They are stitched out of smoke and a silver-grey fear, With eyes made of glass and a crystalline tear.

The moon is a cataract, milky and wide, Watching the tide of the pale shadows glide. They carry their coffins like heavy, gold rings, And weep for the weight of their vanishing things. You are one of us now, in this choir of stone, Where the marrow is chilled to the heart of the bone.

For the gate has been bolted, the key has been drowned, And nothing stays silent that sleeps in the ground.