With bells ringing
and people meddling;
and children around a bonfire
singing:
ring-a-ring-a-dollar
a pocket full of squalor.
Of all the aphrodisias of the all worlds
to make this final vision
not in amorosa but in the incincerator.
That pup is now a green eyed beast:
upon my mouth,
sits some sunlit fantasy
upon some sunlit breast;
now we find a shower of heat
through the soles of our feet;
it burns a hole in our head
and when our brains shall be burnt,
we shall be ate;
and our ashes lie around a blackened stump
to survey mysterious skies, deadened:
the sparkle that went out with that fire
we glimpse in far away star
called Eden.
Once we descended with pride,
now we are in free fall like a dying meteor.
“Dollarisma, Serenissima”
is the princely constellation
of which we are victim,
as every particle of what is left
makes a journey into nursery rhyme.
And those who believe in eternal life
have only the glare of publicity
with which to light their path;
and the friendship of a cancerous dog
with which to howl into the night.