A true All--Hallows, when

Most ancient coin might buy 

Damask to nape the hills: 

A cloud of soprano lace-notes 

Sliding across dawn's underflash, 

The twice-set places more festal 

Than raw souls might wish cleaved 

To palate. Yet all's still provender 

For the plasmodium, with its pipes 

Ranked cardinalic beyond the 

Tabled sacraments, stuff of 

Oratorios so ornately turgid that 

Tongues eschew speaking. Basque 

Embraces Hungarian to loose floods 

Of finnipedalian excess, 

Syllables strung up by the auricles 

And stretched to assonant ruin. 

Back of the head lies a tang of 

Ill-concealed sun, some deity's poor 

Mockery of jalapeno verve. Seemly now 

To draw close the fog, comfort for 

Those who wish to be stricken with 

Ghastly alimentations and bobbed to 

The quick, where they may find the dead 

As long in irony as those believing 

Themselves to live.