Halloween // “Halloween” (by Phyllis McGinley)

The night is moonstruck, the night is merry. Listen! It peals with a chime of words, Twitters the town like an aviary, Haunted by voices stranger than birds’ — Haunted by shades abroad together, Shapes of childhood, mendicant ghosts, Who claim the dark as their private weather, Walking the world in their giggling hosts.   They cast long shadows, or roly-poly. They tamper with doorbells. They chalk the stairs. The night belongs to them, singly, wholly; Surer than Christmas this Feast is theirs. Swarming past hedges like sparrows flocking, The gravel cracking beneath their feet, Flutter the children. When they come knocking, Open the door to them, Trick or Treat.   Open the door to phantom and vagrant, Whistle them in from the wild outside, For under the trees the leaves are fragrant, Over the houses the sky is wide, And only a street lamp vaguely dapples Spellbound paths where the chestnut drops; Comfort them quickly with candied apples, Stay them with pennies and lollypops.   Or they may forget how their beds are standing — Sheets turned down, and a light in the hall — Forget the fire and the clock on the landing And never come back from the dark at all. Coax them, wheedle them, call to them fonder Than ever you did on an evening yet, For who knows whither a ghost might wander With mischief loose and the moon not set? Treat them or trick them. But bar the door Till the Shade is bewitched to a child once more.

 

Wrong season, of course, but I just found this and had to share it. It depicts Halloween beautifully — and, I think, explains so much of the fascination with it.

Some more about Phyllis McGinley here; she was a great poet, a Pulitzer Prize winner praised by W.H. Auden, and yet she’s completely forgotten today. Really too bad.