Flesh of Ruin
after Georg Heym
In the charnel house of a forgotten church bones sprawl like splintered furniture femurs and tibias tangled in a grim parody of intimacy
The air is thick with the stench of rot and the faint tang of incense as if the very stones were exhaling a noxious breath of decay
In this dank and forsaken place I find a beauty that is both repellent and fascinating a beauty that clings to the bones like the fetid moisture that seeps from the cold stone floor
I took Georg Heym's fascination with decay and the grotesque and applied it to a specific scene, using his characteristic dense and expressive diction to explore the beauty in ugliness. I aimed to capture his sense of frenetic energy and discordant music in the poem's long and sinuous lines.