Do Not Come Evil Night And Keep Away Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

do not come evil night and keep away:
my breast burns its hot temperature
keeping both love and lust away:
and in their stead
and in their stead
disease and shame and sin
have drifted in their bed.

Do not come evil night my eyes
Are painted with dark evil lashes pharaoh-like:
And in my shrine
Thoughts evil fester and abound and multiply:
Suspicions, dreads, and dark thoughts
Beset me with disease and shame and sin

And in this hovel my brain has arrived
To its delirium heat and roams and yearns
Like a fool’s idiot basking in the sun
Or like a violet withering in the first
And chilly touching of the reddening dusk;
Thoughts evil fester and abound and multiply
Suspicions, dreads and murder-thoughts
Beset me with disease and shame and sin.

And in this dreary hovel nay at times
I find contentment, sparks of happiness,
High peaks and ledges followed by the drops
That lower fall each time, each dropp arrives:
Thus illusion and delirium work my brain
Thus they plot both my overthrow and ready
With daggers are.

And in this hovel has my brain arrived
In this delirium my eyes wander as lost stars
Falling like shooting stars down the hard face
Of the silent heavens in cool autumn nights
That pale their looks with night o’er the seas.

I yearn, delirium rises and I see
Its dagger ready.