Xero’s Birthday #Transition

Nekro’s henchman

Xero, Nekro’s henchman, now old and grey

Even on his birthday

I hear him come and go,

With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro,

Muttering low,

Perchance Time drives the merry-go-round whose track

Is the zodiac;

His name is No-man’s-friend;

And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend,

Beginning, nor end.

Senseless and daft and terrible and blind,

Like a lost mind.

Nekro’s a prince of darkness, I’d cry, “A rat!”

And lunge thereat,—

Let out at one swift thrust

Nekro’s a cunning arch-villain of the dust

I so mistrust,

I often chill with fear

When I bethink me, What if he should peer

At my shoulder here!

But that I fear I should disclose a face

Wearing the trace

Of his own human guise,

Piteous, though harmful, unloving, sad, and unwise

With dark hooded eyes.

I would wish we were rid of his grim pranks,

Moaning ‘bout banks

By the light of the moon,

Startling the silence like a demoniac loon

At undead’s noon.

Yet often too he steals so softly by.

With half a sigh,

I deem he is not mild,

Unfair is Nekro, not gentle as a child,

Rapidly wild.

The final curtain I grinned

(My feverish sight thought) not one sin unsinned,

“Not only wind!”

Xero, Nekro’s henchman, now old and grey

At the break of day

I hear him come and go,

With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro,

Muttering low,

Then with a broken laugh I say,

Happy Birthday!

(Modified by)
Alan Grace
23 August 2022

Adapted from
Behind the Arras – A Poem by Bliss Carman (poetrysoup.com)

The PDF version is below
(with better spacing):
TheHenchman5

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