The Cracked Bell

(with homage to Charles Baudelaire)

It's bitter-sweet to hear, these winter nights,
 beside the babbling fire, old memories
 which swell up slowly like the distant sprites
 of church bells, singing fog-bound melodies.
 Impressive is the bell's full-throated ease,
 belying weight and age, and ringing out
 its message, like a guard, alert, who shouts
 the hours, and tends his slumbering companies.

 But me, my soul is cracked.  And when it tries
 to fill the cold night air with song, it only
 croaks the death-rattle of some nameless male
 who, smothered under a mound of bodies, dies
 with silent screams, unable to wriggle, lonely,
 straining with all his might … to no avail.