Ink Tea Stone Leaf

I speak of the plague, the pale, terrible plague,
and surely you know the one of which I speak –
the one you remember, the one from the history books
and the old tale of the dreadful red masquerade,
the one with the frogs, the frightful angel of death
who came on the backs of creeping rats and the heads
of flying prisoners of war, hurtling invisibly
over the walls of a continent, blanketing skin
with pocks and scars and the sweat of a cold death,
that took your mother and will take your daughter too,
and which seems to be harmlessly, currently passing you by;
the one that the history books have all suppressed,
the one from that midnight movie, I’m sure you recall
the zombies and aliens mingling curious flesh
’til the Earth was burnt in a cleansing blast of flame,
the one that drove you out of your mind and deeper
into the well of reaction, that cleared the way
for the herald who blows invincible heaven’s horn
for the coming of He who heeds no earthly obstacle,
you know the one, it was all we could talk about then;
all of the lies we told were about it, and everything
we blamed on each other came back to that terrible plague
with the glibly hilarious name and the hideous cough,
the one you’ve forgotten because of the sun in the sky
and the clowns with painted motley dancing in your palms,
the one from a hundred years ago, the one
from a thousand years ago, it makes no difference
as nobody lives for a thousand years, and nobody
remembers a thing but the movies, and movies are real
and every one knows that the movies are fake, and it’s been
a hundred years, are we really still talking about the movies?