“A Legend of Faring Town”

Published in Verses in Ebony, 1975.

Her house, a moulting buzzard on the Hill

Loomed gaunt and brooding over Faring town;
Behind, there sloped away the barren down

And at its foot an ancient, crumbling mill.
And often in the evening bleak and still,

With withered limbs wrapped in a sombre gown
And leathery face set in a sombre frown,

She sat in silence on her silent sill.

She came to Faring town long years ago—

With her a winsome child, the ancients said,

She vanished, where, the people did not know—

Meg mended ropes for ocean vessels’ sails

And let the people think the child was dead—

She did not speak, but there were darksome tales.

One night the village flamed with sudden red—

From off Meg’s roof we saw the cinders stream.
She came not forth—we entered—and in the gleam,

Saw her crouching, like a thing of dread,
Above a skeleton within her bed.

“Child slayer!” I still hear the women scream—
High a red and cinder spitting beam;

We hanged her and the flames consumed the dead.

A book we found, and written piteously

In Meg’s sad scrawl: “Today my darling died

“But she shall sleep forever by my side—

“They shall not give her to the cruel sea.”

We cringed and gazed in terror and in shame

Where still a form swung black against the flame.