Like some bruised hand the purple sky strikes down,
Pressing to the wet earth, and from the moor
And crawling, sluggish runnels comes a mist
Like the thick breath of fever-smitten things
That lie half-unconscious, yet afraid to move,
Lest movement bring activities of pain.
No star - a diamond on a giant hand,
To show it once was decked with consequence--
Only the purple clouds like swollen veins
That cannot ease to the relief of rain,
And threaten merely stirless tree and hedge,
And the blank windows of an unlit house
That sentinels a garden, where the fence
Has rotted over memories of a rose
And mouldered bones of scentless eglantine;
Where dead leaves cling as if they feared to break
The brooding silence with their rustling fall;
A rick of hay that now is blackened straw,
Wherein no shivering mouse would care to creep;
A broken halter hanging on a rail,
Spotted with yellow fungus like a plague,
As though some steed of death had tethered there:
A door ajar, yet rigid, as if wedged
By something flung upon the other side.
And suddenly, where Nature holds her breath,
And the dark boughs seem craning as a witch
Whose skinny fingers point the victim out
(Like the small shriek the doubling rabbit gives
When on its trail it hears the slavering hounds,
Betraying in its terror, where it hides
Invisible amidst the folding grass),
So to the monster watching of the night
Comes the thin horror of a human cry!
First published in The Australasian, 26 May 1917
