Narcissus In Hades Poem by Matthew Buchwald

Cradles of dirt and sighs of dust,
Limbs fall into the gizzards of the earth:
From end to end the cradle rocks
Propelled by dismal winds.

And he stares into a fractured mirror,
Adjusting the collar on his shroud,
Moaning through lips of a throat that's been slit,
With sounds of mourners filling his head
Echoing the woe of his sorrowful smile,
Like a choir-sung elegy.

Before his eyes, glimpsed between swollen lids,
The once splendid flesh, seems now a sad leaving--
Pasquinade of lost youth, now sans shining glory--
And all that he loved, or all that he wished,
And all that ever did make him to smile,
Is shattered into splinters and shards.

He weeps at the mirror between his knees
Marking a grave with sighs of dust
While end to end, blown by dismal winds,
His cradle rocks over the gizzards of the earth.