4 hours ago
Condolences
Your scythe’s grown dull, old Harvester–
it cuts the bloom of grasses raggedly
and some heads not at all, they merely bend
as if a moaning breeze had passed
not lord of all Earth’s ends,
their pride and beauty’s grim dispatcher.
Instead of cleanly clipped they waver on
upheld as if by vigor but in truth
alive in overtime by clever tricks
of life-support which stay your fated arc
too long: they blink, forget, and fade
but not to dust.
How they must mock you at the Horsemen’s Club,
those fabled slayers Pestilence and War
and Famine, though they too have shrunk away
to sulk on thrones too massive, overgrown
with poppies and their terrors overthrown
by Public Health, Deterrence, UNICEF!
Your scythe’s grown dull, old Harvester–
it cuts the bloom of grasses raggedly
and some heads not at all, they merely bend
as if a moaning breeze had passed
not lord of all Earth’s ends,
their pride and beauty’s grim dispatcher.
Instead of cleanly clipped they waver on
upheld as if by vigor but in truth
alive in overtime by clever tricks
of life-support which stay your fated arc
too long: they blink, forget, and fade
but not to dust.
How they must mock you at the Horsemen’s Club,
those fabled slayers Pestilence and War
and Famine, though they too have shrunk away
to sulk on thrones too massive, overgrown
with poppies and their terrors overthrown
by Public Health, Deterrence, UNICEF!
Non-practicing atheist