The Dance of the Dead October 30, 2010

 

Once a year they come to search

for those they lost, they grimly lurch

through graveyard, chapel, tomb and church.

Here come the missing people!

Hear them call, they’ve come to find

the loved ones they had left behind.

Their deathly, rasping, voices wind

round tower, yew and steeple.

Soldiers killed in distant wars

and sailors drowned on foreign shores,

long lost children crave once more

the comfort of their mothers.

Look, within their graves they wake!

Watch the tombstones shift and break!

Dead folk rise and strive to take

the hands of parted lovers.

Then, to some unearthly tune,

they dance beneath an eerie moon.

Bones embracing ‘til, too soon,

the birds announce the dawn.

Silently they weep and turn

to earthy graves or ocean’s urn,

once more to sleep alone and yearn

for hallowe’en, to mourn.

.

Paul Hughes 2010

Dead miserable March 9, 2008

When people die they talk a load of rot

and moan at how the living are so noisy

they really are a pessimistic lot

their lack of joie de vivre quite annoys me