The Black Casket

First draft I By his deeds he was duly judged And by his greed he was condemned To the bowels far beneath the Earth- Cursed tenfold to rot and feed the maggots unfed. Stark Kilns was his doomed name A man who burnt with hideous flame- A name to forever tumble to oblivion With its proprietor’s ruins and vision. Not a soul wept Not a tear on cheeks crept. Not a soul attended the funeral Save Kilns’ only overdue Aunt Feen- A shrunken lady of a hundred and fifteen. There petched on the solitary scaffold Was the casket, a sad but terrible thing to behold- For every inch of it gleamed of black- A thing that still makes me tremble as a feeble stag. The old priest by dogma read the eulogy And alas! The casket was lowered To the bowels of the cemetery As the Sun hid its pale face Beneath the horizon. Thinking that this had brought the end I turned away from my hiding behind the fern But my attention became arrested By a hollow sound, as if a drum had dropped. There, the very black casket had reached The base of the grave harder than intended. Or perhaps the undertakers were in haste For I had noticed them on edge and none chaste. Then the undertakers fell to filling And cursing that grave which today Is marked by nothing but a pale olive tree On which every evening perches a mute owl. For ten years, that olive tree has never a fruit borne: For ten solid years the owl has had itself sworn To keep guard on that tree, that hideous tree And Wait for its doomed master, I presume. It had braved through like the very true son Who had lost to the claws of cold death The best dad in the world. So it had braved Through the rain and cold that had plagued most days How the town stirred upon becoming sentient Of the cold guest at Kilns’ resting place. Nothing but the owl was on the people’s menu Many a townsfolk went to see for themselves How the owl stared back with so much nonchalance How the creature just glared back, its huge eyes inert. The townsfolk upon leaving would but mutter: “A ***** creature! I never trusted Kiln’s death.” It came that these very townsfolk then sat And secretly planned to bring to its death This inert guest upon Kilns’ grave. II