Rats, ruin, and rot
Matter not in this glittering abbey,
The walls sky-high, doors welded shut.
Seven rooms, each one a different color
Of the ravaged rainbow.
Masquerade party, Commedia dell’arte.
As peasants outside succumb to illness
Weeping blood through pores,
Rational thought through every orifice,
The eclectic guests dance.
Dulcet music and flowing wine,
A ballroom cleaved like meat
From the bone.

Darkness, decay, and decadence:
Colombina twirls in her billowy dress,
Flashes of black and white like dead dove wings
In the blue room. Faithful companions
Follow, fox-trotting: Arlecchino in the purple,
Pierrot in the violet hall.
Between green walls lit sapphire,
Greedy Pantalone counts his coins
In time to the chimes of the ebony clock.
In the flame-orange chamber, the Innamorati,
Luscious lovers, ignore the horde
Of masked dancers, the stench of
Distant death, and waltz
Their own crescendo.

Mundane made magickal, murderous.
The Dottore, white coat and useless remedies,
Watches the penultimate room’s white walls,
Sensing the slow trickle of plague,
His own helplessness.
And in the last room, onyx black and bathed in crimson,
A masked, cloaked figure slithers silent
Across the ballroom,
Neither jester nor servant, lord nor duchess,
Inevitable, instinctual--Death,
Leader of this Danse Macabre.