Walking is always a dangerous thing, and the local deities must have their due.
We offer them pain and loss of face and hope they’ll be satisfied with scraped skin, blood, and shame.
Sometimes they demand broken bones and suffering prolonged.
Sometimes they ask for more, and the night fills with sirens and terrible grief.
Visitors stride hand-in-hand, often conversing or gazing around.
Residents tread with more guarded mien, knowing the area’s capricious cast.
We bedeck the streets with flowers hung; place propitiatory wreaths on front doors.
This illusion appeases us and thus we forget
That hungry gods must always be fed and so presume to calculate our loss.
We never think, “It will be my son. My mother. My dearest friend.”
We never think, “It will be me.” We never think, “It will be all of us.”
We never hear how the mountains shudder when death plays jigs
On a cadaverous fiddle and laughs and laughs and laughs.
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