Draft in the author’s style. This poem was written for Poet of Chilling Shivers to sit beside the author’s own readings, and is waiting for the author’s review. The commentary is a working draft too.
I took the night job at the yard where the old cemetery lay,
To guard the gates and lock the paths from sunset until day.
The moon hung low and yellow like a coin a ghost had lost,
And the mist crept up between the stones, all silver-wet with frost.
At three o'clock a bell began to toll from the chapel tower,
Though the chapel had no bell inside since the fire of the final hour.
I followed the sound with my torch held up, through the rows of leaning stone,
And found each grave I walked beside had a name I'd always known.
There was my mother's maiden name, and my grandfather's too,
And at the end, a smaller stone that bore my name, brand new.
The bell fell silent as I ran and I dropped my torch to flee,
And the gate I locked at sunset swung wide, as if for me.
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Commentary
Night watchmen tell their own kind of ghost stories. In this poem a bell that should not ring leads the guard through the graveyard to a stone that carries his name.
The speaker takes “the night job at the yard where the old cemetery lay.” The moon hangs “like a coin a ghost had lost,” and at three o’clock “a bell began to toll from the chapel tower,” though “the chapel had no bell inside.” The speaker follows the sound with “my torch held up.”
Each grave carries “a name I’d always known,” including “my mother’s maiden name” and “my grandfather’s,” and at the end “a smaller stone that bore my name, brand new.” The bell falls silent, the speaker runs, and “the gate I locked at sunset swung wide, as if for me.”