(after Walt Whitman’s I hear America singing)

By: James Aitchison

I hear a murderer singing, and varied croaks I hear:
Those of mad goblins, each one singing his as it should be
cracked and crazed,
The carpenter singing as he measures his coffin wood,
The madman singing in the depths of the asylum,
or in his bath,
The banshee singing what belongs to him in his tree,
his victim singing in the dungeon dark,
The gravedigger’s song, the vampire’s on his way in the morning,
with his lips bloodied and red or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the zombie, and of the werewolf at work,
or of the witch stirring her cauldron,
Each singing what belongs to him and her and to no elf,
The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of
grave robbers, robust, chortling,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious howls.

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James Aitchison writes horror fiction under the pen name James Lee.