Author: MW
Four horsemen astride their mounts walk gently on
tarmac roads, that cage the noble old tenements
their crumbling faces and dirtied windows silent
long since, emptied tram lines, strange witnesses
to the funeral march.
Long dead trees line the avenues the horsemen thought
to triumph down, their work like Roman generals
bringing swathes of the wretched to heel.
Like those they were not to find, they must instead
wander empty cities, pick between barren fields
their vain search for souls, like so many
failed harvests, and blighted crops.
After the dismal party who came
not to inherit the earth, buried in the soil
and nesting in the tree-corpses lay in wait
mushrooms, bees and worms.
Long after the horsemen left, and put their folly down,
strange new flowers grew, with sunlight for their crown.