Necropolis

[A necropolis on a November night]

[THE CORPSE]

"Unruly moon,

Why dost Thou thus unleash Thy hounds,

Which howling break the silent tune:

Our breathing space resounds.

"Or chase, not to break, the orbit of old:

To wax and to wane like the waves,

Which gravitate towards Thy caelestial cold

And we in our lowly graves."

[HECATE]

"Replenished is the Lantern

But the waxen waves pursue

Reflection in your extant eyes,

Which lidless still wink at them,

While until dawn's dew

Nature may yield to your sighs."

[THE CORPSE]

"Memento, my fellow corpses, the menacing Muse

'Mongst the carnival of Paris

In 1832 to swell His revenues.

"Does there ring a knell? How this fearful Fiddler reaped

The crowd of souls,

With high-handed sway His human hoard heaped.

[Aside]:

"As for us, as Orpheus first in glory thrived,

We his partisans

Forwent our skill, which Death should have revived,

Outperformed and quiet."

"But fasting has done,

Therefore let us our state requite."

[Enter SELENE, ARTEMIS and HECATE as onlookers-the Danse Macabre. Exeunt the goddesses. Enter DEATH playing the violin.]

[THE LATE DOCTOR]

"Let us not with cracking din harrow,

Alarm the dead in bliss.

Retry thy toil, Bow, mine to dismiss:

Recast thy amorous arrow.

"Bow, at thy strings let wind shudder with glee

Undying harmony solemnize.

No greater artist of cure shall rise

Than Thou, booked for eternity."

[THE CORPSE]

"A puppet, amenably ensnared by the Fiddler's strings,

A voice at least, rising up to fall.

Where some may live the frozen moments of our wasted wings,

Others, indifferent, but sprawl.

"Bar him who on a farandole abreast insisted,

Who pardoned the Pariah in His stall

Freely for partaking in the grand parade of Paris,

Within his own vocation to cover all."

[The sun is rising. THE CORPSE levels his last speech at DEATH]

"Unruly Law,

I may loathe how with contenders Thou viest,

When masked 'mongst a masquerade all the more

All having en masse enticed.

"Yet I owed to Thee, which Thou didst confine,

Ambition not unspoken for,

But Thou canst not ever Thyself undermine,

Hence mute is Thy music: Encore!"

[DEATH]

"Agile fools, do not trim -as ye define-

My fearsome form of old

With frothy flattery;

Timeless air I breathe as to engulf

Such outcries brief and bold,

"Casualties, as ere long the loyal dawn

Shall Nature from Her apogee

To Her source restore.

True to form, the honours of last word,

Last laugh and dance are mine

To be."