THE GARDENER WHO POISONED THE TREES
The gardener who poisoned the Ficus trees
Works for the Mafia judge in the nearby town
Protects the Bosses and imprisons innocent boys
Sleeping in the silence suspended between Siena and sea
But sitting proud as a Cock on the Constitutional Court
In the terra of Saint Francis outside of Assisi
Son-in-law of the Boss who hid stacks of gold
Bricks buried in the burnt green grass of a Chianti garden
Dying in poverty forgetting where it all was hidden.
Wretched people full of violence, hate, fury and fear
No semblance of sanity nor life can enter here
Friends of Mago Fanfo man with a good heart but a sundry past
Whose list of friends reads like a mafia reunion book
The magician who took me in and gave me food and shelter
In the hidden rooms outside the now dead mining town
Where the soldier buried his sword and became a saint
In the valley of the abandoned mining quarries
Where churches have no roofs nor any living congregations
In the ungodliness of this place angels can lose their wings
While the sins of new saints still simmer in the vaporous emptiness
Of underground rivers entering into the lake entrance of Hell
Where all the sewerage of the past flows in purging streams
Steamy purifying surfaces cleaned again from the infected malignancy
From the damage done to the souls of saints by the criminally insane
All relatives in kind to these mafia mozzarella bosses
And the damage continues even unto the terrace of the Ficus trees
Poison coming in through friendly holes in the Winter garden’s glass
With tricks of appearance opening even unto death
Like the cook who poisoned the guests with mushroom soup
Or the composer writing music to damage the brain
Brothers who kill brothers or mothers sons
Or the happy Tuscan vacation manager
Who dove in the pool with a weight around his neck
Never to surface alive to make another vacationer happy
Or the nasty man next door who continues to blaspheme God
All these tales sing of death sung into the flow of the river of Hell
Black tones reflected from the river, refrains rising of a smiling insanity
Empty creatures whose lamentations rise into the vapours of human waste
Beasts of prey devouring the living to live
Like gulls waiting for worms in the newly ploughed vacant fields
In the heated surface stench of manure of horses and cows
Waste captures sin and the sublime rises up into the sun from the garbage
Through the misty morning wetness to reach an earthy paradise.
.................................................
Epilogue
The gardener who poisoned the trees
An act beyond inhuman madness
A footnote to the slaughter of the innocents
In a story from Pharaoh and Herod
Here in the monstrous wood
Other half-human hyenas continue to prowl
And blood flows out of the spirit world
Running into the streets of Hell
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