A murder descends without sound,
Black vestments of tattered priests;
They speak in the tongue of the drowned—
One hollow note, then silence feasts.

A parliament of eyes convenes
In ruin where the dark begins;
They measure what the stillness means—
The slow arithmetic of sins.

A lamentation drifts, of swans,
White elegies among the reeds;
They grieve for what the dusk has drawn—
The wound through which the evening bleeds.

A shiver of sharks patrols below,
Where drowned confessions drift like prayer;
Their eyes are glass, their hunger grows—
They feed on what no priest would dare.

A watch of nightingales takes wing
Above the graves the living leave;
They carry what we cannot bring—
The only hymns the dead believe.

A company of wolves at rest
Lies circled round an ashen stone;
Their breath ascends, a prayer unblessed,
To a god of moss, of root and bone.

A memory of elephants
Kneels among the bones decayed;
They hold the dust of continents—
The weight of all that’s cast astray.

A whisper of ghosts remains,
Still moving through the words we say;
We cursed the beasts with human pain—
And what we named has walked away.