Fear leaves its mark
That later courage can’t efface; and still they teach as they were taught.
What do they understand about the dark?

The night’s for springing evil, sullen things that lurk.
Perhaps they knew this once, but in the lengthening years, forgot.
(And yet still feel a vague unease: fear leaves its mark.)

Can’t they recall night’s broken silences, how stark
Each alien sound? Recall the endless waiting for the things the night has brought?
Why can’t they understand about the dark?

They will not speak of things that wait or stalk;
They will not name the ones who have been lost
At night, or speak to those upon whom fear has left its mark.

Instead they’ll tell you to be brave; they’ll smirk
And say your fear is only in your thoughts.
Oh no, they do not understand about the dark.

And nothing that they say to do will work:
You cannot face, or fight, or flee. You cannot.
Fear lives outside you, and will leave its mark
On those who understand about the dark.

O yes, it is Halloween.

Perhaps more frightening than ghosts or, you know, things, is the specter of a villanelle so rhyme-mangled and loose-scanning. In extenuation I fall back on the rock-solid authority of some anonymous Wikipedia editor, who points out that the villanelle “has been noted as a form that frequently treats the subject of obsessions, and one which appeals to outsiders….”

Image: Nothing Left to Say by Flickr user Michelle Robinson (“michmutters”), published under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).