Death's Garden

Death's garden, in which every day
Death, alone, comes out to play.
He tends his plants and sees them grow,
Creeping slyly through the rows.

Tulips of a sombre grey,
Never touched by sun's warm rays.
Here was sowed a seed of power,
Now a monstrous blackened flower.

Pansies grown from seeds of hate.
Ivy seems to suffocate
The tree from which it sucks its life,
Each thorny spike a tiny knife.

In this bed, not a rare species,
A morbid plant of jealousy.
In that bed, grown from lustful seeds,
A tangled mass of lethal weeds.

Death stalks the garden with his hose,
Stopping here to smell a rose,
Nostrils smiling, backbone bent
To delight in rancid scent.

Death prowls on, more seeds to sow,
More trees to feed, more plants to grow
In this place of deadly birth,
The sign upon the gate marked 'Earth'.