The Grand Feast

We’re all gathered at the table for the grand feast
The fare is piled to the ceiling, plates overflowed.
There’s roasts and dumplings quince and cheeses
Breads and veggies in every shade; beets and roots
And the sun-ripened fruits in abundance.
The wine flowing from an everlasting source--
A renewable nourishment without end--

None need go hungry, not at a feast such as this;
But once one’s eyes have feasted on the fare
There appears in the peripheral the erstwhile unnoticed
Crushed between the corpulous girth of his fellows
The men and women of skin and bone, wraithlike, enormous eyes
Like lanterns through the fog, all that’s allowed to partake.
At their feet small immoble bundles curl, hunched into themselves,
Skin stretched impossibly tight over an outcropping of bones.

At the heads of the table are men obese beyond belief
They no longer hold a shape but are quivering lumps of flesh and fat
Expansive, ever growing, stuffed sausage fingers bulge over
Fancy rings, rings of wrist oozing out of velvet sleeves, reaching,
Devouring a thousand men’s shares in a single gulp;
A ravenous, frenzied, and everlasting hunger that can’t be sated.
And tossing scraps down they pause to watch a tiny bony hand snatch it up.