Ballad of Winds

By PAUL FRANCIS SUTTON

Over the roof-tops and through the streets
Dances and shouts the black north wind,
Rushes and whirls, advances, retreats,
Then chuckles in glee at the bloody rind
Of a dying moon fleshless and blind;
While strangling fast in the grip of the night
Scintillant stars struggle to find
A logical cause for the wind's delight.

But the wind whoops on o'er the rotting slime
Of bones on an alley's garbage heap,
And the wind wails on down the caves of Time,
Disturbing the dust o'er the shades asleep;
Till out from their ebon bodies creep
Whispering things by the sane forgot,
Phantom things o' the pits sunk deep
In the charnel mush of the world's black rot.

Ho! the night screams in the bellowing wind,
While down the dark sweep of a star-paven trail
Dance crystalline shadows of breezes designed
And formed by the mad demon god of the gale;
Swept high o'er the roof-tops gibber and wail
Like imbecile children, like maniac's spawn,
Dark memories laughing, till skies turning pale
Command all the phantoms to death in the dawn.

L'ENVOI

Ho, Prince, you laugh at my songs of the night;
Indulgent you smile and perchance praise their tune,
Then turn to sweet singers who drool of delight,
For, Prince, you 're afraid of the winds and the moon.