The veil of an old mill creaked with age-old strain,
Its wheels no longer turned in light,
Silent then, the gears refrained,
From whirring through the endless night.
The river’s edge was overgrown,
With tangled weeds and mossy grey,
And in the stillness, whispers droned,
Of lives long lost and slipped away.
The shadows in the windows loomed,
Their outlines blurred in spectral hue,
A faded light, a musty gloom,
Where time had etched its darkened view.
The mill’s dark loft, a hidden place,
Where time and dust had left their mark,
Held secrets veiled in darkened space,
And echoes from a past gone dark.
Beneath the beams, the dust lay thick,
With traces of forgotten lore,
A murmur there, a shiver quick,
Of tales that haunted the old mill’s floor.
The wheelhouse was then empty, bare,
Yet something stirred within the deep,
A restless breath hung in the air,
Where ancient sorrows lay asleep.
In a moonlit haze, the spirits danced,
Around the mill’s forsaken heart,
Their steps a spectral, mournful trance,
That shadows in the night imparted.
And though the mill was still and cold,
Its heart still beated with ghostly grace,
The veil of time was dark and old,
Yet whispers haunted its hollow space.
The creaking timbers groaned and moaned,
As if they held a mournful tale,
With each gust of wind, a spectral groan,
Each creak, a whisper of the pale.
The empty gears and rusted chains,
Now silent in their ancient sorrow,
Spoke of labour lost in vain,
And ghosts that lingered through the morrow.
The old mill’s walls were etched with dirt,
A canvas of the ages past,
Each crack and stain, a mark of time,
Where shadows of the lost were cast.
The echoes of the past remained,
In every corner, every seam,
A place where sorrow’s ghosts sustained,
And shadows wove their haunting dream.
Esther Elizabeth Racah
