The shrouded accomplice to imagination
Comes as spectre of our ghostly collaborations
The emissary of fear reverses our intelligence
And where a life imitates its art and withers
So broaches evil night upon the counterpane
A tangible icon of cultured terror to senses
A tarantula that paws the cover relentlessly
Hairy drumming made to a slow music of night
And it repeats in dreams of shadowed dismay
Or it is the rasping creak of danger upon stairs
The slow footsteps ever upon riser and tread
That falter briefly, ere they resume more softly
And then to fade like an echo of abandonment
To ask in earnest that we tell a different story
While we may still imagine a better world
Before we wake to another bloody dawn
