Poems from prompts III

[hawkwing_lb]

This one's for katallen. Probably not the poem you might've been looking for. And I'm trying to play with form, which is generally a bad idea, too.

"III. A Death in Winter."

Snow-shrouded graveyard | church and steeple
in silence they come | black-booted tromping
past white-mounded tombstones | carrying the bier.

Elves die on Tuesdays.
You can't bury them
inside the churchyard:
it wouldn't be right.
So they dig the grave
- black icy earth -
out of unsanctified ground,
ground set aside
for parricides, blasphemers
and people who don't belong.

The surpliced priest, shivering
mutters a few words about
immortal souls, and peace
- if they have souls, these
beggars out of Faerieland, these liars
selling dreams and visions
for a place at the fire.
But God knows his own.

Look at the brother, so pale
and so fey, so resentful
alone by the graveside
(they say the mother came
from the city, you know,
years back, she was born there).
And why can't they go back
where they came from,
these elves, these dreamers,
these good-for-nothings?

Famine their plate | hunger their knife
from strife fleeing | dreamers and visionaries
past white-mounded tombstones | carrying the bier.