Scary poems!

[pyreneeees.livejournal.com]

Request!

Halloween is coming up. Please, please recommend your favorite scary/creepy/Halloween-themed poems. Anything goes! In return, here is one I like.

Abandoned Farmhouse
by Ted Kooser

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

Comments

Nightmare Number Three by Stephen Vincent Benet

[raienna.livejournal.com]

We had expected everything but revolt
And I kind of wonder myself when they started thinking--
But there’s no dice in that now.
I’ve heard fellow say
They must have planned it for years and maybe they did.
Looking back, you can find little incidents here and there,
Like the concrete-mixer in Jersey eating the wop
Or the roto press that printed "Fiddle-dee-dee!"
In a three-color process all over Senator Sloop,
Just as he was making a speech. The thing about that
Was, how could it walk upstairs? But it was upstairs,
Clicking and mumbling in the Senate Chamber.
They had to knock out the wall to take it away
And the wrecking-crew said it grinned.
It was only the best
Machines, of course, the superhuman machines,
The ones we’d built to be better than flesh and bone,
But the cars were in it, of course . . .
and they hunted us
Like rabbits through the cramped streets on that Bloody Monday,
The Madison Avenue busses leading the charge.
The busses were pretty bad--but I’ll not forget
The smash of glass when the Duesenberg left the show-room
And pinned three brokers to the Racquet Club steps
Or the long howl of the horns when they saw men run,
When they saw them looking for holes in the solid ground . . .

I guess they were tired of being ridden in
And stopped and started by pygmies for silly ends,
Of wrapping cheap cigarettes and bad chocolate bars
Collecting nickels and waving platinum hair
And letting six million people live in a town.
I guess it was tha, I guess they got tired of us
And the whole smell of human hands.
But it was a shock
To climb sixteen flights of stairs to Art Zuckow’s office
(Noboby took the elevators twice)
And find him strangled to death in a nest of telephones,
The octopus-tendrils waving over his head,
And a sort of quiet humming filling the air. . . .
Do they eat? . . . There was red . . . But I did not stop to look.
I don’t know yet how I got to the roof in time
And it’s lonely, here on the roof.
For a while, I thought
That window-cleaner would make it, and keep me company.
But they got him with his own hoist at the sixteenth floor
And dragged him in, with a squeal.
You see, they coöperate. Well, we taught them that
And it’s fair enough, I suppose. You see, we built them.
We taught them to think for themselves.
It was bound to come. You can see it was bound to come.
And it won’t be so bad, in the country. I hate to think
Of the reapers, running wild in the Kansas fields,
And the transport planes like hawks on a chickenyard,
But the horses might help. We might make a deal with the horses.
At least, you’ve more chance, out there.
And they need us, too.
They’re bound to realize that when they once calm down.
They’ll need oil and spare parts and adjustments and tuning up.
Slaves? Well, in a way, you know, we were slaves before.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t.
(I wish I hadn’t looked into the beauty-parlor
And seen what was happening there.
But those are female machines and a bit high-strung.)
Oh, we’ll settle down. We’ll arrange it. We’ll compromise.
It won’t make sense to wipe out the whole human race.
Why, I bet if I went to my old Plymouth now
(Of course you’d have to do it the tactful way)
And said, "Look here! Who got you the swell French horn?"
He wouldn’t turn me over to those police cars;
At least I don’t think he would.
Oh, it’s going to be jake.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t--
And I’d go down in a minute and take my chance--
I’m a good American and I always liked them--
Except for one small detail that bothers me
And that’s the food proposition. Because, you see,
The concrete-mixer may have made a mistake,
And it looks like just high spirits.
But, if it’s got so they like the flavor . . . well . . .

I thought / its deeper darkness might absorb me

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I've always really liked that poem, so it was cool to see it turn up on my friends page today! :)

These two are kind of obvious, but no collection of creepy poems should be without them:

--"The Cremation of Sam McGee," Robert Service (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174348)
--"Porphyria's Lover," Robert Browning (http://www.bartleby.com/101/720.html)

That said, one of the poems that most reliably raises the hairs on the back of my neck is actually this one:

Turkeys
by Galway Kinnell

Sometimes we saw shadows of gods
in the trees; silenced, we went on.
Sometimes the dog would bound off
over the snow, into the forest.
Sometimes a tree had twenty
or more black turkeys in it, each
seeming the size of a small black bear.
We remember them for their care
for their kind ever since we watched the big hen
in the very top of the tree shaking
load after load of apples down to the flock.
Sometimes I felt I would never
come out of the woods, I thought
its deeper darkness might absorb me
or feed me to the black turkeys
and I would cry out for the dog
and the dog would not answer.

Re: I thought / its deeper darkness might absorb me

[thelichen.livejournal.com]

I loooove that Galway Kinnell poem. nice to see it here :)

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Oooh, well asked.

I have to run so I'll just give links:
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/heriots_ford.html

Heriot's Ford by Kipling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains

There Will Come Soft Rains by Teasdale

[thelichen.livejournal.com]

this one always makes me shiver:

All Hallows
by Louise Glück

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

i can't think of any specifically halloween-themed poems, but your request did bring these to mind:

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartments,
Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.
--Emily Dickinson


"Desert Places"
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
--Robert Frost


"Bella in the Wych Elm"
There were no marks of disease or violence on the body,
but her mouth had been stuffed with taffeta.
--Brian Haughton

She through the rootlets.
She murked by moss.
She in its whelm.

She the owl in the tree
trunk's mouth stretched
to canvas a scream.

She the taffeta still
in her teeth.

She slight in the night's dark
peignoir, eyes on the sky
so long stars disappear.

She flesh left
for the air to edit.
She year after year.

First, the gold rush of hair
as she collapse, light
avalanche from the hands
that ferried her there.

She slung on his arm
and set--an epaulet.

She first dragged
down the woods' brusque
tangent, first taken
from the tousled ground.

She a splurge--scarved
and sexed. She slim consent.
She the throat's spangled
cackle and choke.

She first in the trysted park.
She in his arms his lips the grass.
Through the rootlets.
Murked by moss.
In its whelm.

She our sleep
thrashed and thrummed.

She spurns our nerves,
she trips our veins.
She missing reel,
we scratch the blanks.

She for his mantel.
She for your mantel.
She my trinket too.
--Stacy Gnall

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

oh, and "half-hanged mary!" of course. it's super long, but one of my absolute favorite atwood poems and wonderfully appropriate for halloween.

"Half-Hanged Mary"

7 p.m.
Rumour was loose in the air,
hunting for some neck to land on.
I was milking the cow,
the barn door open to the sunset.

I didn't feel the aimed word hit
and go on in like a soft bullet.
I didn't feel the smashed flesh
closing over it like water
over a thrown stone.

I was hanged for living alone,
for having blues eyes and a sunburned skin,
tattered skirts, few buttons,
a weedy farm in my own name,
and a surefire cure for warts.

Oh yes, and breasts,
and a sweet pear hidden in my body.
Whenever there's talk of demons
these come in handy.

8 p.m.
The rope was an improvisation.
With time they'd have thought of axes.

Up I go like a windfall in reverse,
a blackened apple stuck back onto the tree.

Trussed hands, rag in my mouth,
a flag raised to salute the moon,

old bone-faced goddess, old original,
who once took blood in return for food.

The men of the town stalk homeward,
excited by their show of hate,
their own evil turned inside-out like a glove,
and me wearing it.

9 p.m.
The bonnets come to stare,
the dark skirts also,
the upturned faces in between,
mouths closed so tight they're lipless.
I can see down into their eyeholes
and nostrils. I can see their fear.

You were my friend, you too,
I cured your baby, Mrs.,
and flushed yours out of you,
Non-wife, to save your life.

Help me down? You don't dare.
I might rub off on you,
like soot or gossip. Birds
of a feather burn together,
though as a rule ravens are singular.

In a gathering like this one
the safe place is the background,
pretending you can't dance,
the safe stance pointing a finger.

I understand. You can't spare
anything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawl against the cold,
a good word. Lord
knows there isn't much
to go around. You need it all.

10 p.m.
Well God, now that I'm up here,
with maybe some time to kill,
away from the daily
fingerwork, legwork, work
at the hen level,
we can continue our quarrel,
the one about free will.

Is it my choice that I'm dangling
like a turkey's wattle from this
more than indifferent tree?
If Nature is Your alphabet,
what letter is this rope?

Does my twisting body spell out Grace?
I hurt, therefore I am.
Faith, Charity, and Hope
are three dead angels
falling like meteors or
burning owls across
the profound blank sky of Your face.

12 midnight
My throat is taut against the rope
choking off words and air;
I'm reduced to knotted muscle.
Blood bulges in my skull,
my clenched teeth hold it in;
I bite down on despair.

Death sits on my shoulder like a crow
waiting for my squeezed beet
of a heart to burst
so he can eat my eyes

or like a judge
muttering about sluts and punishment
and licking his lips

or like a dark angel
insidious in his glossy feathers
whispering to me to be easy
on myself. To breathe out finally.
Trust me, he says, caressing
me. Why suffer?

A temptation, to sink down
onto those definitions.
To become a martyr in reverse,
or food, or trash.

To give up on my own words for myself,
my own refusals.
To give up knowing.
To give up pain.
To let go.

2 a.m.
Out of my mouth is coming, at some
distance from me, a thin gnawing sound
which you could confuse with prayer except that
praying is not constrained.

Or is it, Lord?
Maybe it's more like being strangled
than I once thought. Maybe it's
a gasp for air, prayer.
Did those men at Pentecost
want flames to shoot out of their heads?
Did they ask to be tossed
on the ground, gabbling like holy poultry,
eyeballs bulging?

As mine are, as mine are.
There is only one prayer; it is not
the knees in the clean nightgown
on the hooked rug.
I want this, I want that.
Oh far beyond.
Call it Please. Call it Mercy.
Call it Not yet, not yet,
as Heaven threatens to explode
inwards in fire and shredded flesh, and the angels caw.

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

3 a.m.
Wind seethes in the leaves around
me the trees exude night
birds night birds yell inside
my ears like stabbed hearts my heart
stutters in my fluttering cloth
body I dangle with strength
going out of the wind seethes
in my body tattering
the words I clench
my fists hold No
talisman or silver disk my lungs
flail as if drowning I call
on you as witness I did
no crime I was born I have borne I
bear I will be born this is
a crime I will not
acknowledge leaves and wind
hold on to me
I will not give in

6 a.m.
Sun comes up, huge and blaring,
no longer a simile for God.
Wrong address. I've been out there.

Time is relative, let me tell you
I have lived a millennium.

I would like to say my hair turned white
overnight, but it didn't.
Instead it was my heart;
bleached out like meat in water.

Also, I'm about three inches taller.
This is what happens when you drift in space
listening to the gospel
of the red hot stars.
Pinpoints of infinity riddle my brain,
a revelation of deafness.

At the end of my rope
I testify to silence.
Don't say I'm not grateful.

Most will only have one death.
I will have two.

8 a.m.
When they come to harvest my corpse
(open your mouth, close your eyes)
cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise,
I was still alive.

Tough luck, folks,
I know the law:
you can't execute me twice
for the same thing. How nice.

I fell to the clover, breathed it in,
and bared my teeth at them
in a filthy grin.
You can imagine how that went over.

Now I only need to look
out at them through my sky-blue eyes.
They see their own ill will
staring them in the forehead
and turn tail.

Before, I was not a witch.
But now I am one.

Later

My body of skin waxes and wanes
around my true body,
a tender nimbus.
I skitter over the paths and fields,
mumbling to myself like crazy,
mouth full of juicy adjectives
and purple berries.
The townsfolk dive headfirst into the bushes
to get out of my way.

My first death orbits my head,
an ambiguous nimbus,
medallion of my ordeal.
No one crosses that circle.

Having been hanged for something
I never said,
I can now say anything I can say.

Holiness gleams on my dirty fingers,
I eat flowers and dung,
two forms of the same thing, I eat mice
and give thanks, blasphemies
gleam and burst in my wake
like lovely bubbles.
I speak in tongues,
my audience is owls.

My audience is God,
because who the hell else could
understand me?

The words boil out of me,
coil after coil of sinuous possibility.
The cosmos unravel from my mouth,
all fullness, all vacancy.
--Margaret Atwood

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, this one rocks!

[thelichen.livejournal.com]

I just read about Bella in the Wych Elm the other day - so creepy. That poem is excellent

<B>"No TV"</B> -- Author Unknown (anyone remember it??)

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Little Ghost cries.
Little Ghost pleads.
Nary a good does it do.
"No TV," says Papa Ghost.
"The people show is too scary."

[duathir.livejournal.com]

All Souls' Night, 1917

You heap the logs and try to fill
The little room with words and cheer,
But silent feet are on the hill,
Across the window veiled eyes peer.
The hosts of lovers, young in death,
Go seeking down the world to-night,
Remembering faces, warmth and breath—
And they shall seek till it is light.
Then let the white-flaked logs burn low,
Lest those who drift before the storm
See gladness on our hearth and know
There is no flame can make them warm.

by Hortense King Flexner

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Zbigniew Herbert, 'The Rain' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3164519.html)

Joan Aleshire, 'The Dead' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3209852.html)

Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Death' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3262556.html)

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 'The Haunted Oak' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3275038.html)

Edwin Arlington Robinson, 'Luke Havergal' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3279845.html)

Kim Addonizio, 'Night of the Living, Night of the Dead' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3280422.html)

Georg Trakl, 'Grodek' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3281059.html)

Edwin Arlington Robinson, 'The House On The Hill' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3282645.html)

Louis Macneice, 'House On A Cliff' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3289951.html)

George Gordon, Lord Byron, 'Darkness' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3291438.html)

Edwin Arlington Robinson, 'The Pity of the Leaves' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3294827.html)

J.R.R. Tolkien, 'Shadow Bride' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3336646.html)

Lucie Brock-Broido, 'How Can It Be I Am No Longer I' (http://greatpoets.livejournal.com/3344638.html)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 'The Skeleton In Armor' (http://war-poetry.livejournal.com/136337.html)

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

you are awesome.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

O Where Are You Going?

"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."

"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"

"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."

"Out of this house" -said rider to reader,
"Yours never will" -said farer to fearer,
"They're looking for you" -said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.

~~W.H. Auden


Wraiths

They know not the green leaves;
In whose earth-haunting dream
Dimly the forest heaves,
And voiceless goes the stream.
Strangely they seek a place
In love’s night-memoried hall;
Peering from face to face,
Until some heart shall call
And keep them, for a breath,
Half-mortal ... (Hark to the rain!)...
They are dead ... (O hear how death
Gropes on the shutter’d pane!)

~by Siegfried Sassoon


The Sin Eater

I

Hark ye! Hush ye! Margot's dead!
Hush! Have done wi' your brawling tune!
Danced she did, till the stars grew pale;
Mother o' God, an' she's gone at noon!
Sh-h . . . d'ye hear me? -- Margot's dead!
Sickened an' drooped an' died in an hour!
(Bring me th' milk an' th' meat an' bread.)
Drooped, she did, like a wilted flower.
Come an' look at her, how she lies,
Little an' lone, and like she's scared . . . .
(She lost her beads last Friday week,
Tore her Book, an' she never cared.) . . .
Eh, my lass, but it's winter, now --
You that ever was meant for June,
Your laughing mouth an' your dancing feet --
An' now you're done, like an ended tune.
Where's that woman? Ah, give it me quick,
Food at her head an' her poor, still feet. . . .
There's plenty, fool! D'ye think the wench
Had so many sins for himself to eat?
Take up your cloak an' hand me mine. . . .
Are we fetchin' him? Eh, for sure!
An' you'll come with me for all your quakes,
Clear to his cave across the moor!
-- Margot, dearie, don't look so scared,
It's no long while till your peace begins!
What if you tore your Book, poor lamb?
I'm bringin' you one will eat your sins!

II

It's a blood-red sun that's sinkin'. . . .
Ohooo, but the marshland's drear!
Woman, for why will you be shrinkin'?
I'm tellin' you there's nought to fear.
What if the twilight's gloomish
An' th' shadows creep an' crawl?
Woman, woman, here'll be th' cave!
Stand by me close till I call!
"Sin Eater! Devil Cheater!"
(Eh, it echoes hollowly!)
"Margot's dead at Willow Farm!
Shroud your face and follow me!"

III

One o' th' clock . . . two o' th' clock. . . .
This night's a week in span!
Still he crouches by her side. . . .
Devil . . . ghost . . . or man? . . .

IV

Woman, never cock's crow sounded sweet before!
Set the casement wide ajar, fasten back the door!
Eh, but I be cold an' stiff, waiting for th' dawn;
Fetch me flowers -- jessamine -- see, the food is gone. . . .
Light enough to see her now. . . . Mary! How her face
Shines on us like altar fires, now she's sure o' grace!
Never mind your Book, my lamb, never mind your beads,
There's th' Gleam before you now, follow where it leads.

V

Tearful peace and gentle grief
Brood on Willow Farm:
Margot, sleeping in her flowers,
Smiles, secure from harm:
In a cave across the moor,
Dank and dark within,
Moans the trafficker in souls,
Freshly bowed with sin.

~by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Witch's Life

When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood
whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.
My shoes turn up like a jester's.
Clumps of my hair, as I write this,
curl up individually like toes.
I am shoveling the children out,
scoop after scoop.
Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.
Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?
Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?
Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.
Yes. It is the witch's life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire.


-Anne Sexton
from The Awful Rowing Toward God


Ghost House

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

~by Robert Frost


The Mewlips

The Shadows where the Mewlips dwell
Are dark and wet as ink,
And slow and softly rings their bell,
As in the slime you sink.

You sink into the slime, who dare
To knock upon their door,
While down the grinning gargoyles stare
And noisome waters pour.

Beside the rotting river-strand
The drooping willows weep,
And gloomily the gorcrows stand
Croaking in their sleep.

Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way,
In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey,
By a dark pool´s borders without wind or tide,
Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide.

The cellars where the Mewlips sit
Are deep and dank and cold
With single sickly candle lit;
And there they count their gold.

Their walls are wet, their ceilings drip;
Their feet upon the floor
Go softly with a squish-flap-flip,
As they sidle to the door.

They peep out slyly; through a crack
Their feeling fingers creep,
And when they´ve finished, in a sack
Your bones they take to keep.

Beyond the Merlock Mountains, a long and lonely road,
Through the spider-shadows and the marsh of Tode,
And through the wood of hanging trees and gallows-weed,
You go to find the Mewlips - and the Mewlips feed.

~by J.R.R. Tolkien

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

A Grave Song

I've a pocketful of emptiness for you, my Dear.
I've a heart like a loaf was baked yesteryear,
I've a mind like ashes spilt a week ago,
I've a hand like a rusty, cracked corkscrew.

Can you flourish on nothing and find it good?
Can you make petrification do for food?
Can you warm yourself at ashes on a stone?
Can you give my hand the cunning which has gone?

If you can, I will go and lay me down
And kiss the edge of your purple gown.
I will rise and walk with the sun on my head.
Will you walk with me, will you follow the dead?

~by Amy Lowell


The Changeling

Toll no bell for me, dear Father dear Mother,
Waste no sighs;
There are my sisters, there is my little brother
Who plays in the place called Paradise,
Your children all, your children for ever;
But I, so wild,
Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,
Never, I know, but half your child!

In the garden at play, all day, last summer,
Far and away I heard
The sweet "tweet-tweet" of a strange new-comer,
The dearest, clearest call of a bird.
It lived down there in the deep green hollow,
My own old home, and the fairies say
The word of a bird is a thing to follow,
So I was away a night and a day.

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,
We snuggled close and sat round so still,
When suddenly as the wind blew higher,
Something scratched on the window-sill,
A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered;
No one listened or seemed to see;
The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered,
Whoo--I knew it had come for me!
Some are as bad as bad can be!
All night long they danced in the rain,
Round and round in a dripping chain,
Threw their caps at the window-pane,
Tried to make me scream and shout
And fling the bedclothes all about:
I meant to stay in bed that night,
And if only you had left a light
They would never have got me out!

Sometimes I wouldn't speak, you see,
Or answer when you spoke to me,
Because in the long, still dusks of Spring
You can hear the whole world whispering;
The shy green grasses making love,
The feathers grow on the dear grey dove,
The tiny heart of the redstart beat,
The patter of the squirrel's feet,
The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,
The rushes talking in their dreams,
The swish-swish of the bat's black wings,
The wild-wood bluebell's sweet ting-tings,
Humming and hammering at your ear,
Everything there is to hear
In the heart of hidden things.
But not in the midst of the nursery riot,
That's why I wanted to be quiet,
Couldn't do my sums, or sing,
Or settle down to anything.
And when, for that, I was sent upstairs
I did kneel down to say my prayers;
But the King who sits on your high church steeple
Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,
Learned all my lessons and liked to play,
And dearly I loved the little pale brother
Whom some other bird must have called away.
Why did they bring me here to make me
Not quite bad and not quite good,
Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite,
to take me
Back to Their wet, wild wood?
Now, every night I shall see the windows shining,
The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam,
While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us
are whining
In the hollow by the stream.
Black and chill are Their nights on the wold;
And They live so long and They feel no pain:
I shall grow up, but never grow old,
I shall always, always be very cold,
I shall never come back again!

~by Charlotte Mew


Overheard on a Saltmarsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.
No.

Give them me. Give them me.
No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.
No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
No.

-- Harold Monro