by Cristel Hastings
published in WEIRD TALES, November 1933
The hills are quite the same, the mountains, too;
The sun is just as bright, the sky as blue
As hills and suns of other years—
Only the town is not what it appears.
Once laughter sounded here, and dancing feet;
Once miners came with new wealth down the street—
Now there is brooding silence day and night,
And windows stare like eyes bereft of sight.
Doors hang on leather hinges, open wide;
The gloomy rooms are host to ghosts inside—
Here grizzled wraiths of miners wander by
On moonless nights down where the creek-bed lie.
Time made of this one street a weed-grown trail;
No voices here except of winds that wail
Through doorless shanties where the pack-rats run
Through dusty webs some luckless spider spun.