A Rhyme for Halloween (Maurice Kilwein Guevara)

Bij Halloween

 

 
Halloween door Emma Brownlow, 1860

 

A Rhyme for Halloween

Tonight I light the candles of my eyes in the lee
And swing down this branch full of red leaves.
Yellow moon, skull and spine of the hare,
Arrow me to town on the neck of the air.

I hear the undertaker make love in the heather;
The candy maker, poor fellow, is under the weather.
Skunk, moose, raccoon, they go to the doors in threes
With a torch in their hands or pleas: “O, please . . .”

Baruch Spinoza and the butcher are drunk:
One is the tail and one is the trunk
Of a beast who dances in circles for beer
And doesn’t think twice to learn how to steer.

Our clock is blind, our clock is dumb.
Its hands are broken, its fingers numb.
No time for the martyr of our fair town
Who wasn’t a witch because she could drown.

Now the dogs of the cemetery are starting to bark
At the vision of her, bobbing up through the dark.
When she opens her mouth to gasp for air,
A moth flies out and lands in her hair.

The apples are thumping, winter is coming.
The lips of the pumpkin soon will be humming.
By the caw of the crow on the first of the year,
Something will die, something appear.

 

 
Maurice Kilwein Guevara (Belencito, 5 november 1961)
The Bloomfield Halloween parade in Pittsburgh, 2012

 

De Amerikaanse dichter, schrijver en hoogleraar Maurice Kilwein Guevara werd geboren op 5 november 1961 in Belencito, Colombia, en groeide op in de buurt van Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Maurice Kilwein Guevara op dit blog.

Zie voor de schrijvers van de 31e oktober ook mijn vorige twee blogs van vandaag.