De La Mort

A cento from "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti

Courtenay Schembri Gray is a Northern writer of the weird, the eerie, and the macabre. She is the author of The Maple Moon newsletter on Substack.

This cento uses lines from “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti.

---

Hobbling down the glen,
bright-fire-like barberries 
cooing altogether. A moonlit 
poplar branch whistled like 
a bird done with sorrow. 

Decay and burn. 
Decay and burn.

Clucking and gobbling,
like a rock of blue-veined 
stone. Roaring sea; a foam
-topped waterspout, come 
and kiss me out of death. 

---