A Million Mushrooms

The Gothic Archies

A million mushrooms fill the field
Where marchers' bodies lately fell
For marchers, marching heavy-heeled
Release more spores, that march as well

Across the twilit charnel ground
And over long-bewildered farms
Through palaces, where not a sound is heard
Though there should be alarms

But winter comes and only ice
Is crushed beneath the marching feet
In all the land, where once was rice
There now is nothing fit to eat

except mushrooms, which nourish not
the body, nourish not the mind
And often poison
eating rot, the marchers march
insane and blind