(“Me only cruel immortality consumes…” Alfred Tennyson, Tithonus) 

 

Grasshopper stoops;

his shadow,

an elephant

holding a parasol, plods

along achromatic walls.

 

Carcinogenic winds scream

through salt-crooked voids.

In a space beyond dying,

he withers in chitinous weeping.

 

Skin, hardened husk, cracks.

Each step erodes him further

until he is a fine green powder,

the color of our springtime.