The rats of the nearby cemetery,
as midday sounds
are buzzing in the bell.
They have bitten the heart of the dead
and grow fattened on their regrets.
They devour the worm that eats all
and their hunger lasts for evermore.
These are rats
eating the world
from top to bottom.
The Church? – it was solemn and broad
with the faith of the poor within,
and here it is laid waste
since the rats, they have
eaten the host.
Blocks of granite work loose,
the niches gold like graves
gape empty;
all the evocative glory
falls from high pillars and apses
at the sound of the death knell.
The rats
they have worn away the benevolent halos
the clasped hands
of belief in the future,
the mystical tenderness
deep in the eyes of the ecstatic
and the kisses of prayer
on the mouths of the destitute,
the rats
they have devoured the whole town
from top to bottom
like a granary.
So
just as they now die away
the mad alarms, the little bells
crying pity, crying mercy,
howling, over the roofs,
as far as the echoes sound,
no-one hearkens and no-one sees:
since it is the soul of the fields
for so long
blind.
And only the rats of the nearby cemetery
at the spluttering and tinkling of the angelus
converse with the bell.