It enters each day, guttural;
a weeded stone facade surfacing,
the bog still clinging to the parapets,
and a hollow rusted trumpets lament:
                  “Tristadem, tristadem,” it sings,
      haunting the space between.
Rising from those shadowed depths
        to soar out the crenel lacerations
          and lumber over the landscape
        collapse bluntly at my feet:
              “Tristadem, tristadem,” it moans.

My eyes furrow, bent in prayer
      that the earth swallow this foul place,
        the empty halls and echoes
              the intermittent plummet of longing wetness
dripping drops of “tristadem, tristadem,”
        on the dry parchment of any ears
            hermitted away in that stale space.
        Waiting for a days worth of dirt,
      long wood planks nailed in darkness,
    a place to lay one’s head,
and a thread to pull restless lips closed,
  so the morose melody of “tristadem, tristadem,”
            may never pierce them again.