Mausoleum By Torchlight

How they were found by grey-streaked dawn

Lily-white necks bent, the shape of a swan

Pierced and drained of life's red humors

A cursed feast spawning foul rumors

Coffins filled, both large and small

Death’s shadow looms this late fall

Sent below to marble gates

Sealed by angels, resigned to fate

Beneath copper roofs, I sit and brood

Consumed by thoughts both dark and crude

To ponder death’s foul, silent breath

How swiftly they succumbed to death

Madness churns; I must now know  

What secrets their corpses might show

Under Cimmerian night's shroud of dread

I creep to the coffins of the dead

The slender remains a statue's dance

Bound in chains of mortal chance

I crack the seals, wrench lids apart

To reveal the demon's cruel art

Punctures mar flesh, deep to the bone

Each bearing that mark, each alone

Man, woman, child, all the same

Stolen by night, devoured in shame

Chaos consumes as my thoughts take flight

The lids cast aside in desperate fright

A fire I build with trembling care

For I must not leave them lying there

With torch in hand feeling crazed

I consecrate the unholy dead with a blaze

The mausoleum burns, a hellish pyre

Devoured by cleansing, wrathful fire

Not ashes enough for an urn to keep

But charred so they may not wake from sleep

To rise no more from sacred mud

Nor crave the taste of Christian blood