I saw three men around a golden coin:
Like masks become alive their faces screamed:
It was in timedark when no men were kin
That they were warring for the coin that gleamed.
The horns were rich in niches of the wind
And faceless statues slept behind the leaves:
But in that waylaid valley of the Wound
There fought the howling faces of three thieves.
Adders of hate were striking from their hands,
And wolves were halfway fallen from their eyes:
The ground was massed with writhing limbs of hinds:
Their fury drained the bloodless light of skies.
The cleaver of the moon cut through the clouds
And two men lay beneath vast sheets of snow:
Their bodies clogged and thickened into clods
Unburied under foil of lunar glow.
The walled-out moment wore a vitreous look,
The windows of the wooden heaven burned:
The midnight seemed like some fantastic lock
In which the key of Death was being turned.
The third man bent to pick the golden coin,
That golden hole, that breach in brotherhood:
He held his hand up, empty, to the moon
And stared at fingers bright with oil of blood.
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