And a Black Dog is Baying for the Dead

Violets are blue; tulips are gold;
The blood of a man is hot and red;
The ice hangs white and cruel and cold;
And a black dog is baying for the dead.

The snow is kindled by the day,
A glistening, frozen wonderland
Where children burrow, laugh at play.
They're dropping bombs on Pakistan
Which fill the desert with the scream
Of burning metal, burning lives
While fans are rooting for their team
As for the Super Bowl it strives.
A mother is high on meth again,
Her child shivering in the cold
And “Christ was born in Bethlehem”
Sing choirs in cathedrals old.
As outside thugs and soldiers fight,
Inside the poor with soup are fed;
Your Gible evolved into Gabite;
And a black dog is baying for the dead.

The rotting corpse of Autumn leaves
Floats on the stream through forests fair;
A child in his high chair grieves
For his fallen Teddy bear;
The stars are glistening in the skies
As clear and cold as at man's first sight;
A church has split over wearing ties;
And a man was shot through the heart last night
In a ghetto alleyway close and dark
For being black or being white;
And on green lawns of a peaceful park
The children play; and children fight;
In the turning gyre of the pheasant, it
Has heard the hunter's gun and fled.
Trump is running for president.
And a black doing is baying for the dead.

A baby is born in his mother's blood,
An old man breathes out his life's last thought,
In lowlands men fight with the flood
As in stores cheap goods are sold and bought.
On a smooth lawn of brown and green
Men hit a ball into a tiny hole,
And children (callous more than mean)
Have tortured a boy with a broken soul
Till down in the cafeteria
He's taken his life with a length of rope;
They've discovered a new bacteria
By peering through a microscope.
Sonic is getting old Eggman down,
Breaking robots with his head;
Graduates march in cap and gown;
And a black dog is baying for the dead.

From the cold streets of the city gray
To the silence of the forest dell,
From the joy that comes with dawn's first ray
To the darkness of a prison cell
The skein of life runs, day by day,
As rough and hard as turtle's shell,
As fierce as the snow's sublime display,
As cold as the icy breath of Hell,
As dark as a grave of stone and clay,
As strange as the shredding of a sacred veil,
As stark as a green hill, far away
Where they killed like a dog Emmanuel--
And the end returns to where it began
Where the word which killed the Word was said.
The tears of God join the tears of man
And a black dog is baying for the dead.

For we are the sons of the knowledge tree
Who are fed by the flesh of God,
Twisted around our destiny
Like the serpent 'round Moses' rod.
In shards of a sacred chalice,
In fractals of Heaven and Earth
We offer a toast without malice
To the darkness of death and birth
While the tune of life's grandest symphony
Is played on death's rattling bones;
Yea, our hope is that dark epiphany
When the homeless one leads us home.
For tulips are gold and violets are blue;
The blood of our God is hot and red;
He spilled it for us in a covenant new
And a black dog is baying for the dead.