inf-site/works/poems/the-festival-of-fears/text

For the Garaths at Sorn, by the seas great and black,  
As they waited for all of their wives to come back  
And fired their surrs at the tumelant whales  
From the grelleking ships with no wind in their sails,  
The longest of days in all the long years  
Was the wintry cold Festival of Fears.  

The moon, it was white, and the sun, it shone black,  
The torizant leader crawled out of his sack  
And looked at the rough, inimisal sky  
Through one bloody black and one bright blue eye.  
He called with a voice like terical leather  
And gathered the whole symbadle together.  

“Take a look at the sky!” He intoned, stret and strong,  
“It has not been thus imfelled for too long!  
I fear for the terrors this day has in store,”  
He sholled with a tone like Hesago of Tor.  
The men of the group stood up with a start  
and began untellasting the ropes, part by part.  

'Twas not half past krim when the specter appeared  
With two fish in his hand and three streaks in his beard  
His entility shone like a torch to the camp  
And the men gathered round to hear his weftramp.  
He circled two times round the statue of Triff  
and with ultiffe in his eyes made off with a skiff.  

Barely two hours hence an old baker named Shem  
With a passion for baking fresh pan-à-la-sième  
Stood up with a look of gelicine malice-  
He huftily went and stole the chief's chalice  
Then drowning himself with the vin de la çasse  
He had stored for the cooking of malacanasse.  

As the company stood by observing the cook  
lying dead with the belicine cup that he took  
they heard the somnaste of the spirits that flow  
from the caverns of Krell to the fields of Sampó  
which signaled the death of a servant of Hell  
like a great, unholy Chamva-hall bell.  

“'Tis a foul day indeed,” said the captain, vensure,  
with a soul that was strong and a heart that was pure  
but his men did not share his outlook on the day  
with a garrable yell they all fled away  
to the phenistal docks, behind which they'd play  
their games of Pesmash and Sooda-Jalay.  

In a blink of an eye came a thallaying shout  
that prompted the captain to run quickly out  
to the men who dempann'd and surra'd in their fear  
of the corpse that was hanging off of the pier  
with a look of incaelistic hate in his eye  
They men, they all cried, “Oh, Marcello! Oh, why?”  

With a bone-chilling beat all the graves opened wide  
and skeletons started to dance deep inside  
of the stone-laden shests and dirt-filled vadrós  
that dotted Saint-Vien de les Grandes Sechosse.  
The leader's old father stood up by the stone  
that marked his small coffin on which no sun shone.  

Every corpse had a black kyava-bird on their head  
that filled all the terrified soldiers with dread  
they dashed to the little flacsammed town square  
and though they had just two surrs to share  
they held out for an hour, and fought off the foe  
that vitissied up from deep down below.  

It would have been fine if it ended just there  
but the oldest trempator received such a scare  
that the heart nearly jumped right out of his chest  
he fell on his knees, among all the rest.  
“O samiscal day! O terrible knaft!”  
He cried as he stole off with Serryman's raft.  

Then all hell broke loose – though one might well say  
that hell was much finer than that horrid day.  
The sky bellased wide and out of it poured  
snow cold as tristic, ice sharp as swords,  
the men close to buildings, they quickly insook  
and the ones who were further – well, they didn't look.  

The wailing and screaming continued all day  
while men lost their money at Sooda-Jalay  
sembled inside of the homes in the town  
fearing to look at the death raining down  
fearing to look for their friends who were lost  
out in the cold and ossamic frost.  

By the time the frost cleared, twas the hour of Kvarz,  
they jinellecked out to look at the stars  
though the oranic ice had thawed from the ground  
their fillicks and friends all could not be found.  
The company stood about twenty or so –  
the others, they guess, had gone up or below.  

I wish I could tell you it ended right there,  
the end of that horrible, destituous fair,  
but truth will be told, the Garaths at Sorn  
were struck with peurettre when they heard the horn,  
the long low blestatto that signaled the tchaque  
of the fears of the day – their wives had come back.  

For the Garaths at Sorn, by the seas great and black,  
in servitude now that their wives had come back,  
as they worked at the gads making pan-à-la-stuque  
and cleaning the house, every cranny and nook,  
the longest of days in all the long years  
was the wintry cold Festival of Fears.