The Wrong Dance.

At the end of midwinter’s day,

The bad fey have always come out to play

In a place where the icicles droop down towards the bogs

Whispers of the avalanche place black elves who sing,

Echoes from distant ice are the trolls at that dread fling

all accompanied by moss nyrads hums from dead logs

All potent curses of ill luck

mix there on the torn and frozen muck

while goblins wave their phalluses in time

Phalluses serviced by pixies of despair

that like the feelings in their care

give attention that knows no depths or limit

Broken raged men of bones, whirl silently

their heads carried in their arms, trying to see

the places where they somehow came apart

and the cruelest kings and queens of night

are carried in by barrow wights

To loom as fell runes shadows amidst the crowd

Unlucky dancers unknowingly are marked

and will die in the gatherings later part

only marks like a cloud of willowisps glide over darkened snow

Most of those kinds of really hidden things

truly immortal blackened and unholy dreams

are passed to and fro by those fey who know

The decimation when performed

Ensures that the yet unborn

Will be ruled like all who’ve ever come before

The wild hunt itself stands a nearby vigil

Silently waiting for some unknown signal

every horned head bowed and wholly still

This is the last event of fey or man

never despoiled by lights hand

And all it offers is a kind of freedom

For now it is time for the marked to know

to try to escape with nowhere to go

as the lights blink out in but a moment

While all other kinds, they are asleep

even lonely stars may weep

while shadows step across the snow

Saul Scudder, 1999