Refuge Field

You have installed a voice that can soothe you: agents

         of the eaten flesh, every body

         a cocoon of change—

Puparium. The garden

         a birthing house, sarcophagidae—

And green was so dark in the night-garden, in the garden's

         gourd of air—

green's epitome

         of green's peace, the beautiful inhuman

leg-music, crickets'

         thrum—

a pulse

         to build their houses by,

each

         successive molt

a tent of skin

         in which skin can grow, the metallic sheen

of their blue backs

         as they hatch out, winged and mouthed—

Like in a charnel ground, you sit and see.

In one of the Eight Great

         Cemeteries, you sit and see—

How the skull-grounds

         are ringed by flame, how they spread out under

a diamond tent, how the adepts

         pupate

among bones—

         saying I who fear dying, I who fear

being dead—

         Refuge field.

         See it now.

That assembly of sages you would have yourself

         build,

to hear the lineage

         from mouth to ear, encounter the truth-

                     

         chain—

Saying, Soft eaters, someone's children, who gives them

         refuge from want—

Cynomyopsis Cadavarena. On every tongue

         they feed.