IT is horror in a sickly, sallow pelt,
which sags, in haggard clumps, from
the mass of it. it sheds grotesquely,
in the manner of a wizening corpse:coarse mats droop grayish from the
knotted sinew like skin off of bone.it drags its ashen bone·cage, flea·bitten, bilious.
it wears its coal, burning low, as a dying ember.
the sunken and charred pits of the fireless eyes
peer pupilless from a face cast long in shadows.it is not warmth.
it will not blink.it is a hungering thing with a yawning appetite:
the frothing jowls still slaver with the spittle.
the pitchy eyes haunt their unpolished hollows.
the patchy flesh is mottled in its discoloration.its behemothic silhouette looms,
and the beast lumbers its weight
through creeping starless wood.and its voice, like snapping bone,
swells, rasping, from the throat:"nothing here is sacred–
"nothing soft will stay."we christen it, if cruelly.
we curse it with wounds.for to give it any name at all,
i tell you, is a kindness undue.and the skin-changer sloughs its ursine shape,
and the countenance, exposed, turns a curious
snub·nose to the sky and inhales the stale air.the beorning-cub is more skeletal, even, than i
might have guessed: the dismal skin wants for
a healthy bloom, over gaunt cheeks and filthy
freckles in the manner of little swamp tracks,
which stain the meager space of a child's face.
the lackluster braids tumble to a glassy smile,
spray in a cascade to conceal scar and Scrape.and i recall a warning.nothing soft will stay.
nothing soft will stay.
nothing soft will stay.