The Eerie House

by Reinhard F. Hahn
based on the Low Saxon poem “Dat gruli Hus” by Klaus Groth (1819–1899)

t looks so welcoming by day with yellow frames and doors!
But it’s an eerie house by night. There’s shuffling across floors.

There’re slippers shuffling, step by step. There’s shuffling on and on.
But with the new day’s morning light those shuffling sounds are gone.

It sounds like an old woman’s walk in search throughout the night.
It seeks and seeks but cannot find until the day’s first light.

At nightfall it moves from the lounge, comes crawling gingerly
And gropes about outside each door as though it lacked the key.

It fiddles with the kitchen door, it rattles and it knocks,
It claws and fumbles at the boards and touches knobs and locks.

Then it slides on along the wall—swish!—down the hall some more.
Then it goes climbing up the stairs onto the attic floor.

Up there it slowly stomps about and rummages and tears.
Then it steps back toward the hatch and comes back down the stairs.

The lounge door’s heavy iron chain keeps rattling, on and on.
But when at dawn the rooster crows the whole thing’s simply gone.