Alchemisland

Rapping tapping on window panes hard enough to break

Shout out into howling rain, naked night

Cease this play such that pains me, such ungainly displays which awaken

Hours before the crown of haymaking day upbraids

Midnight’s fickle dominion, I see an array of shapes

Moving daintily through hazy rain by the maze

Constraining fear I do not look away

Instead craning, head leaving the safe of the door’s frame

Looking toward that pane whence the knockings came

None there stood save empty space, night black as soot

Sable shadows encasing nearby stables, I hear mares neighing

One brays champing loudly at his bit, a cold befits a crypt grips

At the frayed edges of what can be displayed safely to my mind I decline

This offer outside, this visitor who comes by to frighten me I deny

Once back inside I feel a momentary sense of triumph, of having ruled trial

Smiling at my own strength, my cunning and guile

Soon, same felt overpride

When knocking recommenced, this time harder, wrists more agile

More eager to be inside past the brace of that closed casement

Such a wind blows that steel itself braces, a wind effacing which defaces

The lawn, divesting it of gaudy decorations

Gnomes are later found indecorously placed

Face down in mud and dirty disgracefully, plants displaced

From their places in pots, soil all amok, bent-over crops

It whips and whistles, this wind a riding crop

Riding hammer and tongs over the land, lance aloft

It hurts the turrets and the slates, the finials made

To lend this place some classical grace did shake

And shatter to shards, a wind eager for sparring

Only strong walls and barbicans disbarred it

Sparing neither tree nor thatch, nothing left for an artist

It took trees from the furthest fringes for starters

Once started ’twas a long while departing

Indoors watching masonry ripped from the escarpment

Falling to the floor in harmful hail, statues restarted

Back to constituent parts, scree from art

Screaming tempest hauled debris, rocks hit screen windows

A scene from the tropics, a strong wind winnowing, what billows

Soon is torn, the shorn pillar is finally torn apart, the unwilling

Finally gives, the swimming things are gifted flight one night only

A fish streaming where only lonely comets dare to dream

Indeed it feels a dream alas that feeling of cloudburst hippocrene

Upon the cream of my skin dispelled such reasoning, it was real

Dealing with this situation was direly unappealing

I am situated in the camp of flight when courtesy is denied

I will only fight if I feel it my right, or if all other recourse, is denied

But here hounded in own home, zone called my own

I can run nowhere else, nowhere else to go

I cannot be made a prisoner here or else

Comfort’s balm shall ne’er poultice my worry-ravaged torso

Covering my eyes the sound permits moreso, cleaving me 

The sound nearer, clearer by half.