A Poetry Anthology

I met it under the moonlight, in the darkling glen one eve.

I met it there at midnight, when I went to the crypt to grieve.

I paused there in the doorway, and over my shoulder looked back:

Something strange and cold and fey, stirred in that wind-whispered black.

A rustle of leathery flapping wings, a shadow cast over the moon,

A high keen like a siren that sings, an uncanny twisting faerie tune.

It lighted then atop the tomb, the sepulchre where my dead mother lay,

Strange angel come to portend doom, to look down at trembling mortal and say

"Deep in the star-spangled gloaming, why now wander my lands?

Why now for thy daywalker roaming, when the light hours are thine to command?"

Something inside me quickened, in anger I stared in her slitted eye;

"Though their blood is thickened, unbeating, here my ancestors lie.

But once again you come hunting, and my blood still pumps red.

I'd lay wager those fangs sting, and I'll fight to keep from feeling them yet."

She drew back horrified and hissing, "Lay not your crimes at my door!

Ponies are faithless in their forgetting, but my people have never made war!"

"War? O no," I scoffed at her, "Only a little blood here and there.

A trifle ponies might term murder, if the truth be stated bold and bare."

"Say what you mean, pony, and say it posthaste," the enraged thestral quoth,

"Before I tire of insults only, and you feel my claws and fangs both!"

"An aged mare drained dry, a little colt stolen — these and dozens more!

Borne up on leathern wings to fly, a family slain — but one colt lived and saw!"

With practised hooves my stake I drew, dropped into lowered fighting stance,

Ready to avenge the family I hardly knew, to perform at last this deadly dance.

Mournfully the winds blew wild, the forest howled and moaned,

The monster faced my mother's child; the batpony hissed and the very mountains groaned.

"Fool!" she spat, "But thy kind ever were thus: we drink of fruit and sup on dew;

But what pony has ever listened to us? Daywalkers lie, we pay, what there is new?

The Princess counselled mercy till the day she broke; in her name I tell you, we seek not thy blood!”

With a bitterness old as the hills she spoke, and the oaken stake in my jaws felt good.

I did what was moral and right, when I leapt up towards the stars,

When I snuffed out the light, in that cold and inequine heart.

Why then did the wind sob so, the pines lashing beneath the clear sky?

When it wuthered pained and low, and the moon itself seemed to cry?

And why did the very night, as the thestral mare looked up with love

And whispered “Princess, I come," seem to tremble in the heavens above?

I met it under the moonlight, in the darkling glen one eve.

I slew it there at midnight, and now I look up at the moon and grieve.