A Spectral Fairy Tale Poem by Natalia Bakina

Do you hear a moonlit gale
Whistling its spectral tale?

In the drowsy somnolent realm
When shadowy thoughts overwhelm
Young pairs in their night rambles,
Dark suicidal spirits assemble
To follow the hearts who have lost
Their love and search for its ghost.

The phantoms start hunting and strive
To lure away the alive.
They dry human souls and grieve
For their own needs to relive
The perpetual plot of their end,
The damnation of their mortal bend -
To pass over and over in vain,
To run self-execution again,
To remember a grain of dust,
The speck that remains as the vast
In the instant when their last breath
Crosses the borders of death...

The wanderers gaze at the blank
Limpid waters reflecting the bank...
They perform their bodily act
In the last effort to resurrect
As they step on the red-hot blade
Bridging the chasms of fate.

Confined to wheel and rotate
The vicious circles of hate,
The ravenous spectres halt.
High branches arch in a vault,
Form a fragrant shelter that covers
The spell-bound dreamy lovers
On the brink of their double suicide.
Dizzying odours of blossom hide
Their bodies in a rescuing fit,
In a lethal desire to commit
Self-murders as self-rewards...
Ill spirits, confused and distraught,
Not daring to interfere,
Lower glooming near,
They are ready to open the gate,
Let the newcomers enter straight...
The maze of the unruffled trees
Shares placidly their caprice
To witness the human rise
In the last deadly sacrifice.

The figures on the riverside
Balance under a vow to confide
In each other’s hands and will –
The ghosts surround them still
As they quench their final thirst -
Kiss a farewell outburst,
Kiss a transfer - a gracious heave
Accomplishing and marking their leave.

The spectres turn back to roam -
No pray, no victim, no home...
Thus tricks and traps can prove wrong
In the face of love that’s so strong,

On the moonlit bank there i stand
Pressing the layers of sand
That make a burial mound
Where true love can be found.

There a moonlit gale
Whistles this spectral tale...