Under a waning gibbous moon, late June
On St. John’s Eve, unholy rituals
Take place as nightjars fall to their black feasts.
Old anchorites leave leafy caves, carve canes
From cypress knees, observing, their hunchbacked
Shadows distorting the infernal shapes
Twelve devotees created. Pentagrams
Appeared in the cemetery, midway
Between new monuments and older stones.
Robed figures holding torches silently
Walk widdershins, their circular footpaths
Becoming three concentric circles marked
By powder that’s combustible — and now
These rings of fire leap up, light the night.
Mysteriously, as the supplicants
Position offerings inside the star,
Some tombs quake open. Skeletons emerge.
The hermits’ canes, donated to the blaze,
Refuel it. Beings formed from molecules
Are welcomed as the spirits of misrule.
Nude revelers hail newborn deities.
Author’s note: Inspired by Mussorgsky’s tone poem composed for St. John’s Eve on Bald Mountain on the theme of a witches’ sabbath, June 23, 1867.
