Poems (Forrest)/Waning moon
WANING MOON
The mice of the Dark have nibbled the moon Where it lay on the shelves of Day,And where it was round as the sun at noon They have bitten one half away!A waning moon, where the witches ride On trotting broomsticks across its face,With the lean cats swaying from side to side, Till the world is a haunted place!
I must hang some garlic above my door Lest a vampire stray from the graveyard wall;I must tell my rosary o'er and o'er, And I must not walk on the moor at all,For who can say what its miles may hold Or the grey mist yield to me?There are things all rigid, and blue, and cold, Where the brown moor meets the sea.
I have latched the door, but I hear it move; I have closed the shutter with wooden bars,For this is the night that the goblins love When a black pool holds the stars.I must trim my lamp, put my knitting by, And read from the Holy Book.There are bat-wings blown on a livid sky And the moon dies as you look.