All Hallows Eve! The sun,
Descending into a pyre of branches, becomes a Jack o'Lantern
And, bidden, they spring up on the dark roads
Steps, and windows across the dimming land.
Look! Inferno is in their eyes.
Irony is on their lipless, pillared grins.
And see the Dead! Crouching like cats
In the adjacent blackness,
Or breaking our hearts, as they
Vacillate in the flaming orbits!
They cry unto us, de profundis clamant
That there are no saints, no sinners
No evil, only sorrow, and they rise,
Thicken the moving air
Trailing their redolent tapestries through the drifting, dying leaves
To grieve, and then caress those of us yet living
Here on our esplanade of rubble.

By Ellen Taylor