Intro:-
This poem is about people in a village in Russia sickened by a condition known as ergotism. Their extremities become gangrenous (means their toes, fingers, ear lobes are black and they fall off), and their bodies become convulsive (which they explained as the "devil's possession"). They later found out that it's just a fungi called ergot that infected their rye (used to make bread), not the devil's scheme to destroy their good souls.
N.B. (the ergotism part is true, but the events in the poem are fictional; although some people were burned because they had that condition)
Artwork taken from http://bjws.blogspot.com/2014_01_28_archive.html?m=1
POEM
"Ah!" She yelped "Is that a crack I behold?!"
"Is that rot oozing in my child's throat?!"
"Nipples both droughty and gangrene from the dripping"
"Shawl on hair I snatched with fingers throbbing"
"Wrapped it around breasts and coaxed till only milk trickled"
"Through blue jerking lips tot suckled"
"Oh my Malish suck to get strong"
"The portruding veins in your eyes are surely from the cold"
His chubby legs turn and twitch
And from his teensy foot flowed a brown stench
"Oh Babushka's forseeings in the field were true"
"It's god's punishment for the rye I snitched"
"Ah! My baby's soul the devil stole"
"And now I collect his fallen thumbs in my shawl"
Babushka told with her gnawed tongue and decaying gum
And now the saints and natives for malish have come
Women, children and men march in pure contempt
Vexed by the hovering cloud of the infected scent
They've come to burn their "curse"
Cold eyes pursue their goal with no remorse
"We're to take that devil's seed and send it back to hell"
Into their superstitious lies the foolish mother fell
And so she tossed the the screaming child into Babushka's arms
The shawl roped around his belly to muffle "the devil's" chant
The pulley squeaks as Malish is lowered in the fire
His screams rising into shrills like that of a divine choir
She could hear his ruffled breaths, his sizzling flesh
And stood still and steady, a proud mother of her baby's death
The village sang "The devil has been burned!"
"Satan, is your lesson yet learned?!"
"The sons of god never withdrew!"
"Oh my lord, we've killed the devil for you!"
Lightning struck as the Earth shook
Heavens screamed and all men looked
To see the golden glow in the sky
Instinctually all knew it was the Divine
The lord the Almighty has spoken
To answer a desperate call of the brainless broken
"I have come to curse the world"
"For the blood of the boy you murdered"
The so-called sons of the lord
Heard the fires as it roared
Readying up to imprison their souls
I wreak havoc upon them all
The child was innocent
Your judgement false
Now in the air fly his remnants
In the village of now lost souls
His ashes softly in their lungs settled
To butcher and fry through their blood vessels
The brown rot now flowed across the streets
Seeping through their "Sunday" hoods seams
"Taste the wrath of God upon thee"
"The village cursed for all eternity"
