POETRY

Miry Bog

Warning: Grisly Topic.

Sunderance from an archaic land, 

Kept you from the lustered hands. 

Tore you from the bowels of flesh,

Till in the murky bogs you'd rest.

Blood drawn from temples given,

As sacrifice to the notions driven,

Assured the gurgle of slashed throats, 

Or that stench of the bloated scapegoats.

Those Celtic Kings were killed thrice,

Knew not that peat would be the price,

Lay hanged or bashed in the murk,

Till became the souls that lurk!

Younguns drenched in twilight's clutch! 

Who knew a child would bleed so much,

And spit and sputter until they died?

The screams from strikes wonted birds' flight.

O, the stench of a bog's embrace!

From a body that moves toward sullied grace, 

Move away from it, for decay is foul,

Gruesome witnesses—the eyes of owls.

Till time had pointed arrows toward,

Centuries from the cursed sword.

They lie now as twisted, umber shells—

You can still hear their tolls of bells. 

As they sleep, and mouths at peace,

I pray any suffering from their souls to cease.

Still selfsame in that posture, lay,

Like shut-eyed angels when they pray.

Fare ye well—well at home thou wilt!

I pray now, the spirit wrapt in silk.

Thunder crashed herein, nay more!

Pain from gudgeons no longer bore.

Thine Lord waits behind ivory pillars,

To embrace thine skin and rid thy killers!

They tread nay more and now ist time,

To hear, not the bells, but holy chimes.

*The bodies of bogs everywhere have been found perfectly preserved from as early as the second world war to recent date. Most died to a barbaric scimitar. Those found are as young as fifteen years of age to near forty.