The Goblin Market

Far beyond the city limits,

In a place that isn't, quite,

Gather strange and kindly merchants

Eyes aglow with distant light.

Should you trust unearthly sellers?

Gathered in the forest glen,

Offering unlikely wonders,

Miracles beyond our ken?

Buy, perhaps, a perfect moment,

Trapped in amber, cloaked in frost;

Never pause to ask the merchant

What such trapped perfections cost.

Or if you, a city dweller

Will not past the outskirts roam,

In abandoned storm-drain sewers,

Come the merchants in the gloam.

Seek amidst the storm's wrath's run-off

Miracles that one might dream,

Deep within the city's bowels,

Where the lost things pool and gleam.

Here, you buy a resolution,

Or a goal that might entice;

Know that it is thought distasteful

For to haggle o'er the price.

Finally, to tempt the seeker

Who with peril cares to tread,

Moonless night go to the boneyard

Which contains the ancient dead.

Here reside the merchants dreadful,

Here the human seeming tears;

Here they know the squeamish shopper

Has no interest in their wares.

Here are struck the crossroads bargains,

Which at leisure we repent;

Here we know the dreadful merchants

Know a coin that's spent is spent.