He bore her coffin through the mist that wept on weathered stone,
The mourners’ solemn chants rose thin and cold, then perished in the air;
Yet delirium stirred beneath the night—his heart no more his own,
For love’s blind spell took root and thrived within the moon’s frigid stare.

When the crowd withdrew, he lingered ‘neath the angel’s grieving wing,
And murmured vows no soul could hear, his gaze ablaze with hollow fire;
The lilies waned, their fragrance fled, while worms began their whispering,
And in his chest a fierce flame rose—to claim his bride from that frozen pyre.

A fortnight hence beneath the stars, he clawed the earth with frantic hands;
The loosened clay exhaled and breathed, as though the grave itself did conspire;
He freed her from the silken veil, and kissed her brow where silence stands,
And felt death’s hush ignite in him a madness nothing could retire.

She lay in splendor, ashen grey and still, her shroud a fragile, shimmering veil,
Devouring worms traced her hollow cheeks—mute pilgrims weaving funeral tales;
He sobbed for sin, and brushed her skin, breathed vows no mortal dared to hail,
Till maggots writhed as shadows stirred to witness love through death’s travail.

Her lips half-parted, tinged with mold, her flesh gone grey and winter cold,
He leaned into her sweet decay and drank the silence of the tomb.
But earth betrayed the love-defiled—the flesh it could no longer hold,
The angel’s base gave way in grief—its marble wings pronounced their doom.

Then stone fell screaming from its stand, the marble fractured to its core,
Its wings spread wide as if to fly, a dirge above the churchyard’s hymn;
It crushed them both—the lover beguiled, the bride unearthed from death’s dark floor,
Now wedded fast in death’s cold calm, beneath the angel’s broken limb.