The Stealing of the Midnight Moon
Poem and ‘biography’ of Lord Archibald Hampton
The Stealing of the Midnight Moon
From the collection: My Beloved Damp Bottom (first pub. 1920), a new edition, fully revised and published by Faber & Faber.
‘Beware the baby-faced wolves bearing gifts’,
his mother’s voice in molten drains
sang across the wintry steppe
where stick men bent with cold
raised barbed hands in the gloom
towards the tower’s broken gate
where he prowled a restless watch
behind bars under a midnight moon.
*
And there by the church of the haunted face,
the wispy shreds of her bridal gown,
a streaming train of spinning web
flowed down the path, through tattered woods
of splintered dreams and ancient curse,
echoing in the sunken garden
where under the lonely, lunar light
she waited for horse and rider.
*
The tidal toss of her silver strung carriage
