Danse Macabre

The pale moon glowed with a sickly light,
And a listless breeze disturbed the night,
As down the shadow-haunted road,
A tall, cloaked figure swiftly strode.
A bony hand clasped a black, carved staff,
As he swept his way along the path,
And the trees with dismayed moans did sigh,
As this morbid shade did pass them by.
And where his twisted feet did tread,
The ground itself grew pale with dread.

So this shrouded figure made his rapid way,
To the dark necropolis, it’s walls tall and grey,
A looming, forbidding cemetery,
Yet here he did not hesitate, nor tarry,
The great iron gates swung open, with a squeal of rust,
As if welcoming in a long-anticipated guest.
The figure strode through the vast stone arch,
Overlooked by twisted stone gargoyle guards,
Swiftly making his way between crumbling tombstones,
‘Til he reached the dark heart of this city of bones.

Beneath a carved, mourning angel’s unblinking gaze,
The figure stood and did assiduously survey,
The disordered crowd of tombstones and shrines,
Which coarse weeds did enswathe and sharp briar entwine.
In that moment the world did grow all still and hushed,
As even the dull breeze did cease its soft rush,
The world stood silent and waiting, but then the spell broke,
As with one swift, potent movement he threw of his cloak,
And then did the silver stars all quail with cold fright,
As the Skeleton King was revealed to the night.

Over his head he raised the black staff,
And tombs did resound with his harsh, cold laugh,
Then he began an arcane chant, dark and loud,
And the moon sought to hide herself behind the clouds.
The stony ground then began to moan and heave,
As this necromantic spell his dread words did weave,
His fell voice grew to a dark crescendo,
And he drove the ebon staff deep into the earth below,
And with a cold light burning in the sockets of his eyes,
He did bid his fallen comrades rise.

Then the ground a great convulsion tore,
And from their graves a dark corpse swarm did pour,
From out their mausoleums they did appear,
From gloomy tomb and gothic sepulchre,
Up from their frozen, murky bed,
Did wake and rise the ancient dead.
The twisted skeletal horde did flail and thresh,
As if long-forgotten dreams of flesh,
Were now so faded from their great time entombed,
They were quite unsure of how their bodies should move.

Yet bidden by their malevolent, inhuman master,
They did jerk and thrash and coil faster,
In a grotesque mockery of a dance they did partake,
As this new unnatural life force did them animate.
A strange and surreal vision this otherworldly sight would be,
Had there been a mortal eye to see,
This warped and misshapen, tortured ballet,
Of twisted bodies at some kind of grisly play.
An orgiastic ritual of death, a nightmare worshipping,
Directed by the cold puppeteer, the ashen Skeleton King.

All through the veiled night this dark rite performed,
In the strange beauty of the fantastic, until the new day dawned,
For as the clouds were painted magenta, by the newly rising sun,
The dark powers were dissolved, the dread ceremony done.
And the Skeleton King retreated back into the immortal realms,
And the dead did return to sleep in their grave as nothing more than bones.
So once more in the heavens the great sun burned,
And the living did come to reclaim the world,
And beneath them the fallen laid restful, sound in their bed,
For this one enchanted night had belonged to the dead!