Chinon

Flashes of chaff in the sweet summer night,
mayflies swarm up this quaint islet site

of a hushed-up medieval auto-da-fé.
Feathers at first they seem, then husks or hay

in cobble grooves, these nymphs molt and squirm
and rise on flimsy gauzy wings to spawn

and multiply, then drop in heaps, refuse to my eye.
None too quick we spot what lives then dies, or why.

Unicorns emblazon noble arms, never mayflies,
device this night devised for heretic flesh ablaze.