The Manor House

Frank Chow, Yusuf Kidwai

I saw myself in gloomy halls,
sitting by the gloomy walls,
hoping for a day’s repress,
from this ancient loneliness.
Ghosts cried out from rooms’ unseen,
and memories remained un-clean.
The stench of death hung like mist,
around my feet like tenderness.
The dust was not so much a cover,
but a blanket wrapped ‘round a lover.
And the photos faded, dead,
held sad memories in their head.
The place I sat was carved in stone,
like an old, corrupted throne.
The tapestries, hung to keep the cold away,
trapped the chill within their stay.
The floors had been un-trod for years,
and held the smell of anguished tears.
The light that had shone brightly once,
had long been burned to quick and sconce,
Towers that had once stood proud,
now slumped within a darkened shroud.
The windows hid the daylight out,
leaving rooms in clouded doubt.
The Manor Lord dared not enter here,
when such demons were so near;
demons of the souls now lost,
to the shadows and the frost.
T’was in the night that children screamed,
and the Lady died in dream;
and the laughter that Manor held,
was lost to those who loved it well.
For secrecy the heart can kill,
and this house, it held its fill.
And so I sit alone and rotten,
in this Manor, long forgotten.