Spin about child and seek out the source,
The wind stirs the willows and muddles your course.
Who is your friend to keep you so near,
And who is your enemy, the one that you fear?
“Shut up your doors!” the cold crier declares,
While a mother at bedside yanks out her hairs.
A bit to the left or a smidge to the right,
And you would be dead in the dark of the night.
There glowers down deep in the cellars and pits,
On bodies of children this monster it sits,
Awaiting the day to be freed from the moon,
to mingle with us in the shadow of noon.
The howls break the silence within the dark street,
As you turn to the scrabble of heavy clawed feet,
And wonder if you will pass through the night,
Your silverware held to prepare for a fight.
With a knife and a fork from a setting for eight,
You stand in the square and terrified wait.
Then the moon sinks below the horizon at last,
As the butcher, the baker, the milkman stroll passed.
Confused and forgetting their sins against life,
They return to cleaver, to oven, and to wife.