THE VISITOR

After the black rain ceased,

    quick-lime forest earth moved

and a wasteland changed: Non-human moors

    watched the girl, who watched

them too, through mauve drapes drawn.

    She remembered Robert, in her

youth, recalled the dark beads, opal

    and rank, curious tattoes on

her sombre stairwell, brief moments after

jade stilettoes slipped between tissue and

marrow, to break him down. But he visited

often!

    In a thousand ways:

    She dreamed he was a falcon

    with great wings beating angry;

    he was vulpine at nightfall,

lurking at the passafe-ways in opaque forms.

    He came on cloven hoof, and

danced strange jigs to even stranger music, on her

    belfry stairs. Once awake, she

could not find him there. Today was different, and

    old blood marks glistened in

stolen light, the eyes of him aslant, the eyes of a

    Demoniac Pan in rotting glens.

He came back today, and stank of quick-lime

    graves and the havoc winds,

bringing in night to her who would not sleep

    Nor wake again.

—Walden Muns