• Bones and marrow mingle here
    something's stirring in the barrow den
    shuffling and shambling
    while above are children gamboling
    Macabrees and ashen eaves
    line the walls and a dust carpet rests
    undisturbed but under bony foot
    all the same. The dead rattle the rusted gates and ruffle the feathers
    of the rooks that gather,
    one by one,
    on the stripped bare boughs of the gnarled trees
    that line the rainwashed cobblestone halls
    of that grand earthwork cathedral. The attendants
    sit in silent stony rows,
    resting,
    for eternity--or, that was the idea.
    But as a venerable older crowd files out,
    moaning,
    from the barrow den
    Bones and marrow meet in the sepulchral pews, and a clarion call of war
    shakes the sleep from those churchgoers' old spines
    Now an uneasy wind drags dead, dead autumn leaves,
    rattling,
    across that unwilling, unwitting battleground.

    On this Day of the Dead, our ancestors join us on the Earth
    to revel and feast. A cold, cold wintry wind blows.
    Bones and Marrow-
    -It has begun.