Nagg has fallen from the garbage can
Pushed out by particulate plastic
When the games began everything was not enough
Being coupled with nothingness
Shot through with emptiness
Lack of leg
No hole to stash the valuables in

Midgame now and light not at tunnel’s end
But just behind us where the father’s fathers
Lit fire the incendiary device
Eyes too many radiant flare too many
King’s horses king’s men king’s wild-eyed goons
Cameras now on the telegraph poles
Eyes behind the romantic arras

You can look it up
In any of the competing compendia
Behind the mask of the former capital
State your business
All rise for the superior cleaver
Grafting the daring new appendages
Onto the same old moist quivering bodies

Dream not ye dreamy dreamers
Of relief-providing apocalypse
Neither vainly wish for cleansing flames
Nor fateful resolution in harrowing revelation
Nor banal closure in furnished rooms
These sullen embers can chill indefinitely
And haply erupt in fury or croon themselves to sleep