Dirge

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Click Here to listen. (1.25 min/mp3)

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Slowly bang, the long procession
drums wooden wheeled on cobble,
the street’s wet echoes thump
off buildings like careening birds –
louder, more frightening, less clump.

Bang the procession, slowly long
faces veiled in obscure finery,
black boots scuffing on solid stone –
goose-stepped memory filmed in failed
Technicolor, bleeding sepia tones.

The long procession slowly bangs
past the iron gates, a sharp right
through tall, moss covered facades,
mortar dust weeps down granite walls,
tears wearing on the hardest of rock faces.

Long procession, slowly the bang
awakens even the coldest dead
as the bearers draw their load
pall faced, straining at the weight,
in a muddy, slogging road.

Procession longs the slow bang
in the yard’s deafening silence –
the weeping ended, and prayers done
shadow clad mourners fade into fog.
Soon the soil thuds like a distant gun.