Fever Sheds

A man stare's into fetid gutters

And leering Meriden stares back

What cleanses is beyond him

What cures? Far above him

A pantheon of pestilence

Paupers enshrined in Fever Sheds

From holy typhus' hands

As lowly drudge of noxious seeds to sow

A consecration of inflammation

From callous soil did grow

As blighted walls for gangrenous minds

For rusting spirits and fever dreams

Opiate madness and sulphurous haze

All cathedrals to quarantine, naught

But abattoirs for screaming lunatics

With blessed brimstone in their lungs

All that is dissolute and loathsome becomes his city

A byword for intractable human misery

And as they lead him through the gauntlet

The spires are reaching high, playing arms of Atlas

Belching forth their cancerous mire

Poverty's sores weep into these gaping mouths

The gaping mouths of child and gutter-dweller

This is how a nation dies

Mile by God-forsaken mile

Like seeds upon the callous soil

Mile by barren mile

Gas lights with tired eyes

Their glare as perdition's outer circles

Rest upon him, the conspirator

In machinations with Merihem

Yet, are his maladies

To be counted amongst his blessings?

His skin rots and falls from his bones

In driving rain, from bridges o'er noisome waters hanging

He carves his words, in anguished rage

On the pillars of the golden ribcage

Withering beast under dolorous sky

With gaunt, stooped wretch plunging harpoon

Into the eye, saying: All greatness firm in the storm