Steel String Gallows

Ropes of nickel wound round the neck
The gallows creak and the body bends
Every squeal is filled with fret
Every tone succeeds a death
The death of silence, The death of din
Chords that hang and rests that rend
Tighter still and shriller breaths
The heart beats its own epitaphs

Until the final seizing holds
And what was hot now grows cold
As the audience lies reposed,
Which Atropos had foretold
With feet that dangle passed their odes,
But never breaking Clotho’s mold
No more fugue to bind these souls,
Though Lachesis has not been cruel

The past is where all music lives
The present has but bleeding blips
And all can feel the Sylphs that miss
The riffs that raged with a moribund hiss