**_An homage to Walter de La Mere’s ‘The Listeners’_**

“Is there anybody there?” heard the Listeners,

ears pressed to the moonlit door.

As the Traveller’s feet shifted forward,

on the forest’s ferny floor.

And the Listeners remembered when they too,

felt the mossy Earth beneath their toes,

Where they once travelled, sought out help,

in this still, lonely house of woes.

And the Traveller smote upon the door a second time,

but the Listeners could only respond

With their stillness, their silence, their lost connection

to the world where they no longer belonged.

And the Traveller looked up to the turret,

above the Listeners’ heads,

Wher for a moment one soul thought the man caught his eye,

had broken through to the land of the dead.

But a bird flew up out of the turret,

and the Listeners’ hope fell softly by,

Like tears that were sweetly melting,

into the starred and leafy sky.

So the Listeners went back to their sleeping,

where their curse could cause them no pain,

Yet the Traveller suddenly shouted,

“Tell them I kept my word- I came!”

The Listeners turned back into the darkness,

and smiled at the words he did spake,

For the Listeners did not wish to share their strange fate,

with the one man left awake.

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.