Dance of the Dead

I

There are some beings that wish for death
But will not do the deed themselves,
Lost in some vortex of loneliness or madness,
Patrons of different hells.

II

Sound now the trumpets and rally tired bones to the Dance of the Dead!
We connoisseurs of the night,
Off to the graveyard we go to rally the corpses
With grave faces wrapped in spinnerets on either side of life and death!

Dreamers of bizarre things come one and all,
Cast off thy ruinous prejudices and moral scruples,
Like that swarthy fellow over there,
The immoralist in the plumed hat, mumbling absurdities.

"Charmed to meet thee," he muttered to no one in particular,
Absinthe in one hand, a spade on his shoulder.
Out of the tenebrous darkness of the graveyard a bat shrieked
Under a tall woman's stare. 

Now we dig!
Ask us not why,
Or even how friends and enemies all conspire together,
In this ancient tradition of our cherished cause.

Those that can't afford shovels
Use their hands and claws!
We till and toil,
Scraping the ruddy earth like fervent beasts.

We sing our song of toil or be discarded into the night,
Along with the earth of no respite.
Out of the stubborn skin of that noble victim yields our boon,
A first of many offerings to the moon!

Mother nature, defiled one:
Spit now the ancient wretch onto the ground,
A mere worker of low birth from the looks of him,
But looks can be deceiving!

The people stood in idle perplexity,
Just content in a moment's pause from their arduous labors,
Taxed as they were
From the Lords and myriads life's misfortunes.

Taking a swig of Absinthe, the man in the plumed hat looked on,
And indeed we all looked on as the corpse made to speak.
"Speak, devil!" some wry peasant shouted from the crowd.
"Quiet, chimney sweep!" an old petty merchant barked at him.

"It's a wise man that trusts in love,"
The freshly dug up corpse whispered with glittering eyes darting suspiciously,
"Provided it begets no children."
Such words were greeted with murmurs of dissatisfaction from the mob.

Given to a paroxysm of ire, or even privy to hallucination,
The plumed hat man hashed the corpse's jaw off with his spade.
A society woman shrieked, prompting a mad man
To bark at the moon.

Fiends of death, fiends of the night,
Silence!
Hoist that corpse up on your shoulders and lets us carry him and others to the High Hill,
Where we'll parade under the moon and absorb the wild wisdom of the dead.

"Condemn these corpses!" some red faced plebeian shouted, drunk from the looks of it.
He and other worthies dug out corpses unabashed,
Their worker hands already freshly calloused from the day's field or craft work,
Angrily stabbing the earth with spades or thrusting into sturdily built wooden coffins.

Further corpses were dug out, some of them women.
The children were left where they were, for we are not savages.
Several of them were still decomposing, while others were replete skeletons.
They were hoisted upon broad shoulders, tied to chairs, and marched to the High Hill.

An older man remained stubbornly jabbing at the weary earth with his spade, muttering profanities,
Despite there being enough corpses dug out already.
Some onlookers remained and pitied him, thinking him mad,
While most just scoffed and jeered, their ugly faces made pallid in the pale moonlight.

On the way to the High Hill,
Some jester took from his his mangy pockets the loquacious skeleton's jaw
And briskly slung it at him.
The decrepit wretch caught it and hinged it back on with a laugh.

With screwed up eyes he looked around and rested his shrewd gaze on the society woman.
"What did you think of Shakespeare, my dear?" he said with wink.
Ignoring this chide, the society lady turned up her nose at him.
"Is there a heaven or hell beyond?" Someone shouted from the crowd.

"Would that you would wait your turn to burn!" the Dead man shouted back at him,
Rearing back and spitting a spectral liquid in the voice's general direction.
"Hang the skeleton!" Another voice shouted with an ear splitting roar.
The dead man's jaw was beaten off again with a club, and the procession continued.

III

At last we arrived at our destination,
The High Hill at the center of the village,
A kind of dry weedy, grassy patch of unarable land,
But also the closest point in the village to the celestial pageant of spheres.

"Warm the pyres and torch the liars!" Someone cried out from among our lot,
Garnering the attention of the Oprichniki nearby.
Who said it and why no one of us cared particularly,
So ensnared we were in the festivities at hand.

Like flies born of rotten fruit,
The Oprichniki, the Emperor's murderous thugs,
Swarmed in the shadows of the village nearby the hill,
Watching, ready to attack should the dance become unruly in some way.

But nevermind those w***e-spun devils!
Their fate is sealed should they
Or any authority figure push a
Sleeping giant too far!

Mates, dames, let us unsheathe our dead!
Put them on the grass, or rather keep them hoisted in the air on the chairs,
And let us dance with them in the moonlight like ludic forest beings,
So that we may absorb their hidden secrets through some strange spectral osmosis!

They may speak to us of their own volition,
But forget not that they are all liars and demons, just like our puppet masters unforeseen!
Rather let the purifying moon light reveal their secrets
In a wordless influx, like gods whispering to us in dreams.

Behold! The plumed hat man chatting up a corpse,
No doubt in his absinthe induced delirium fancying it some Moroccan temptress or European Princess,
The insane fellow,
Given up to his drink and the fervor of the night!

"W***e-spun fiends!" A fat man shouted ruefully in the general direction of the Oprichniki,
Whose hands made for their sabers in the darkness.
"Yellow-blooded degenerate mutts!" he ranted on in a raspy voice.
He had to be restrained, but some nearby found it humorous and would have let him continue.

Such terrible influences everywhere!
What of the stars,
Or the moon,
Or the gifts of the Celestial heavens that shine down on our follies in vain?

Raise the dead higher!
Would that some gods or phantoms would rain down from the sky
And shake some reason or decency back into the earth,
Plaything of draconian filth and mawkish corruption that it has become!

Look, even Lords with their lasses dance with the corpses in their wooden chairs,
Not entirely estranged from the festivities of the commoner.
But in the morning all will go back to normal,
And this same Lord will tax these serfs into endless poverty, wretchedness, and despair,

But at least for now were you to squint your eyes
You might even mistake them as equals!
See how the Plumed hat man generously passes around his absinthe;
Let even the mischievous corpse take a swig from it!

The boisterous fat man that shouted at the Oprichniki made his presence known once again,
grabbing the chair from an emaciated lawyer scribe's hands and wildly shaking it,
Like Atlas revengeful in his labors to give the heavens a good shaking,
And the corpse tumbled out of the chair.

This decomposing rogue crawled around in his excitement,
And, drunk with his new freedom, took care to sliver around like a snake
And track down the society woman that screamed at him earlier.
When at last he found her he grabbed her by her ivory ankles and took a good look up her skirt.

The sprightly dame looked down in alarm, screaming and kicking ecstatically.
All heard it but no one deigned to help, not even the Lords.
The skeleton pried the woman to the ground and did things to her,
Amid further screaming from her and laughter from those standing around.

Somehow the plumed hat man in league with other jokers
Procured more absinthe, drugs, and spirits,
And from that point on the dance of the dead started to spiral out of control,
Forgoing all pretenses to decency

More people began pouring into the hillside from the village and nearby villages,
But somehow there were enough drinks and drugs for all.
Some orgies occurred, involving both living and dead,
And some people drank themselves to death on the spot.

The greater purpose of the night was swiftly forgotten!
What of the secrets of the dead,
and of life's guarded mysteries?
All forgotten and dismissed, spit out like unwanted seeds from mouths frothy with vice!

At some point the plumed hat man tore himself away from a lively orgy
And stood up on a chair that once carried the dead.
Famously drunk, he declared all that lay hidden within him:
The most awful and damning diatribes and accusations against the Sovereign and all that would control!

The people must have been brewing with similar resentment,
For it struck a resounding cord with them.
Ardent shouts for revolution sprang forth,
Even from the dead, claiming that they too would take up arms.

Viva la Revolucion!
The people cried, they swore, they promised:
Justice for the wasted, yoked lives of the dead, and for the plights of the living.
The Emperor and his banker vampires would be strung up that very night!

This proved the last straw.
The Oprichiniki on their sturdy mounts swarmed onto the High Hill like a plague of locusts.
War, butchering, violence, suffering!
Let's have it all tonight, as though the earth required our blood sacrifice as a kind of necessary fertilizer.

Thinking an incident likely, the newcomers from nearby villages had brought weapons,
And thus occurred more of a battle than a butchery from the Oprichniki.
Many were killed on both sides, even the dead's flaxen bones were cruelly slung apart.
Many brave souls, many stark drunk or still naked from the orgies, were slaughtered like beasts.

A fire began somehow,
And a thick cloud of smoke bellowed up into the night sky,
Shrouding the celestial spheres and their enigmatic pageants,
Hiding their tears should they offer any for this senseless tragedy that immutably haunts humanity.

IV

One man of dubious origin watched all this from the outskirts of the High Hill, and sighed.
This man, a wide brimmed hat cocked over his eyes,
Took one of the fallen absinthe bottles dropped by the plumed hat man
And absconded away from this bedlam into a nearby dark alleyway of the village.

Whether this mysterious stranger had come to take part in the dance
Or was merely passing through, none could say.
It was apparent enough that he wanted no part in the violent upheavals of the night,
Or even of the follies of humankind in general, this predator and prey sociopath-carnival of insanity that was life.

This man of shattered ideals
Could admit to himself that he no longer cared for any of it,
That it was beyond hope,
And any sane person could see it.

With a shrug he wandered about for a time through the dank alleyway
And eventually sat down against a spattered wall with a slump.
His eyes drifted into the darkness,
And out of that darkness some alley cats wandered over and joined him.

The unknown man laughed ironically to himself.
"Patrons of different hells," he muttered through his teeth.
With an avowing sigh, as though to say what did anything matter?
He took a shot from the absinthe and poured a bit onto the dirty floor for the strays to lap up.