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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

Copyright © NGT NGT | Year Posted 2013

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