The Sinking Spell

The Sinking Spell
by Edward Gorey*

O look, there's something way up high:
A creature floating in the sky.

It is not merely sitting there,
But falling slowly through the air.

The clouds grew pink and gold: its knees
Were level with the evening trees.

Morose, inflexible, aloof.
It hovered just above the roof.

It's gone right through, and come to rest
On great grand-uncle Ogdred's chest.

It settled further in the night,
And gave the maid an awful fright.

Head first, without a look or word,
It's left the fourth floor for the third.

The weeks went by: it made its way
A little lower every day.

Each time one thought it might have stopped
One found, however, it had dropped.

One wonders just what can be meant
By this implacable descent.

It did not linger, after all,
Forever in the upstairs hall.

It found the drawing room in turn,
And slipped inside the Chinese urn.

It now declines in fretful curves
Among the pickles and preserves.

It's gone beneath the cellar floor:
We shall not see it any more.

*Used without permission or recommendation or expectation of positive result.