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1. INTROITUS
AD TE OMNIS CARO VENIET
To you all flesh shall come
and before you all flesh shall cave.
Witness the bleed-out
of desire, the avalanche of synapses,
the extinction of the will. Unprepared
we shall wake to your all-blinding light,
we who carried flashlights and thought
we knew the sun. Your veils
shall set fast our limbs,
swaddle our mouths and noses, our eyes
and ears and skin. We shall speak nothing,
hear nothing, see nothing. Nothing shall be known.
Before you sense is scattered and meaning lies in ruin.
Before you come none willingly
and from you shall go none.
Hear our prayer.
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2. KYRIE
KYRIE ELEISON
CHRISTE ELEISON
Lord have mercy upon her
Christ have mercy upon her
Day have mercy upon her
Night have mercy upon her
Bed have mercy upon her
Hoist have mercy upon her
Catheter have mercy upon her
Needle have mercy upon her
Gastrostomy have mercy upon her
Citalopram have mercy upon her
Riluzole have mercy upon her
Morphine have mercy upon her
Neurone have mercy upon her
Tendon have mercy upon her
Atrophy have mercy upon her
Phlegm have mercy upon her
Bladder have mercy upon her
Bowel have mercy upon her
Breath have mercy upon her
Heart have mercy upon her
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3. GRADUALE
REQUIEM ÆTERNAM DONA EIS, DOMINE
Merry meet by forest road, by the smack of the side of a bus or pearl nurtured in the shell of my own breast.
Merry meet by blade or bullet, or the light of a sputtering neurone. You are never far, nor hard to find.
I offer flowers to my body that will die.
I imagine us someday sitting creased and greyed on the stoop together, rolling tobacco and reckoning scores, but today I am here to look you in the eye, and live.
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4. TRACT
ABSOLVE, DOMINE,
ANIMAS OMNIUM FIDELIUM DEFUNCTORUM
AB OMNI VINCULO DELICTORUM.
The odd unbustling Wednesday
in the Faithful Departed, the craic
will be spooling nicely when – with
little warning but a rash of goose-
bumps and a zebra shadow casting
to the bar – in he’ll gangle. There’s
ones that’ve had a bad run with him;
Orpheus got drunk and lost his
grip on the subject entirely, later
being ripped apart by women. Il a
perdu son Eurydice; he caved in
to his pain. A melancholic fellow,
that, not like himself, all clatter
and tooth, as generous with his grins
as with all else. Cora tends to the wipe
and sparkle with a necromantic glint
and the garden of their talk grows
steady and blooming. Oftentimes we’ll
reach across and grab a pomegranate
seed or three when proffered, why not,
best to keep half...
