May our teardrops fall
into our goblets
and may our goblets
be all that we know

And may the gunmen
rolling about on the snowy
hills be painted on your
son’s bedroom wall

While the pigeon is
waddling and I’m
drinking tea, I hear
noises derived from
our war

And a rat from the
gutter is cursing blind
faith, so I collapse
into dreamland, where
a face keeps on shouting

But the rat gains long
legs and piercing blue
eyes, taking me onward
to a street I once found

And through a metro
he takes me to a wretched old
place of Southern barbarism
and our hopeless fate

The snowflakes will cling
to our hair, and cry in
our ears, but soon we
won’t hear them, I’m
sorry to say

And the snowflakes keep
kissing and crying and
dying, on a tall man’s
knotted old beard--
just like us

May we learn to
somersault and then
crack our necks with a
spiked club

And that blood keeps
on dripping, yet I’m
not too brave, so
I’m last in line for posing

The viola stops playing
because the player’s
been stabbed, but the
music is here till my
righteous death

And my friend kisses
my forehead and hums
the death march while I
stroke the hair of my
final partner in crime

How kind of the last
man to slit both our
wrists in our sleep,
a promise I couldn’t
possibly keep

And because I was
wrong, I could only
fall flat, weeping
softly at this lovely
painting of every man’s
blood on the snow