Cimetière des Innocents, 1786
A pit of fat
congealed within
the overcrowded
Cimetière.
The dead embraced
and intertwined;
names and faces
disappeared.
The graveyard shift
is practical.
No lard is sacred:
souls beware.
The inland sea
of France’s dead
(a casserole,
Parisienne)
was carted off
to make pure soap
and Candlesticks
des Innocents.
And thus a lord
may come to scrub
a floor or else
a peasant’s pants.
They melted all
within the vaults
of Innocents’
collective dead,
a tallow tide
of unstitched skin
and mud-digested
human dread:
the end of us
is slow and strange,
forgettable –
and wet.
Other poems from Zenobia Frost's collection 'Salt and Bone'