Cry the Hunt

Full moon tonight, gleaming on the mist,
And a sound like the barking of geese fills the sky.
A shadow as thin and fine as a banshee's wrist
Along the ground behind the hounds seems to fly.

The hounds are running on both the earth and air,
The lean hounds of black and gray and of moonlight,
Their ears darker than blood, their eyes very fair,
A coruscating mixture of red and blue and white.

Behind them come the riders, each blowing a horn,
Their voices high and shrill, laughing, mocking, fey,
As chill as a dawn when a disaster for the world is born.
Let such a disaster exist! They would laugh it away.

The riders fill their lungs with the music and the joy;
The hounds before them let out a deep ferocious bay,
And then they lunge into motion, after a human boy,
A stag, and a wolf, choosing them all at random as prey.

The wolf turns snarling to face them, his great chest bare,
His head lifted high as he shows off his great teeth.
The hounds snap with teeth that seem no more than air,
And he is borne down, and ripped and trampled beneath.

The stag bounds fleetest, but the outrunning gray hounds 
Catch him up easily enough, and turn and herd him back.
The stag, running from them in terrified desperate bounds,
Goes down before the hot mouths and sharp fangs of the pack.

That leaves only the boy. Longest he runs, and he dreams
That he might be the only one to get away. But then,
In front of him, the curved bone-shell of a hunting horn gleams,
And a rider is in front of him, the little son of men.

The boy stares up, and the rider looks back at him, his eyes
Filled with mad things that hunt the dark between stars.
The child, forced too suddenly, too soon to be wise
To those things, screams, and death his sweet face mars.

The rider smiles, and then wheels his great white steed,
Tossing up a hand as the hounds wheel past him and bark,
And the other stream past, dividing smoothly, taking heed.
Then he goes too, and leaves the little boy dead in the dark.