Shambles

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  Silly Verse

  Be Warned By the Path that Walked in the Night!

  When the nights are long and day’s clouds hang low,

  Creep to the fire, take warmth, ward off fright,

  For as the temperature drops and winter winds low,

  Folks tell of the path that walked in the night!

  If you switch off the box when horror films start,

  If vampires and ghosts turn your eyes fever bright,

  Beware gentle listener, and those of weak heart,

  Don’t learn of the path that walked in the night!

  Built of fine, white blocks, deliberately laid,

  Where once was but mud, the traveller’s blight,

  It eased the footsteps of old man and young maid,

  ‘Till it became the path that walked in the night.

  Daily those slabs caught the first rays of the sun,

  When came the dread morn, and there it was, Gone!

  Did it leave of free will? Was it forced from its site?

  To become the path that walked in the night?

  Did an ogre, stealthily, just before dawn

  Creep from the shades, a dark deed to perform?

  A foul thing, or foul person, of considerable might

  Must have caused that path to walk in the night.

  Spare a thought for the homeless, poor deprived souls

  May you never be in a similar plight;

  Your home and your hearth wrecked by inhuman ghouls

  And crushed by the path that walked in the night.

  God’s creatures they were, ants earwigs and woodlice,

  The survivors struck numb when in dawn’s wat’ry light

  They witnessed the carnage; death is not nice

  If you’re crushed by a path that walks in the night.

  When you cut it, or spike it, or roll it out flat

  Grass is in pain, did you know that?

  Imagine the anguish when from any height

  Come the blocks of the path that walked in the night!

  So, be warned gentle citizen, stand guard o’er your door,

  For in this evil world what chance have the right

  To accumulate chattels, be they rich man or poor,

  When even a path can walk in the night!

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