(I) 
The day she visited the dissecting room 
Thev had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey, 
Already half unstrung.  A vinegary fume 
Of the death vats clung to them; 
The white-smocked boys started working. 
The head of his cadaver had caved in, 
And she could scarcely make out anything 
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather. 
A sallow piece of string held it together. 

In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow. 
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom. 
 

(2) 

In Brueghel's panorama of smoke and slaughter 
Two people only are blind to the carrion armv: 
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin 
Skirts, sings in the direction 
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends, 
Fingering a leaflet of music, over him, 
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands 
Of the death's-head shadowing their song. 
These Flemish lovers flourish; not for long. 

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country 
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.