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
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