Goblin Town

Note: the photos below were taken 9 years after I wrote the poem. In that time, the trees have grown up, changing the nature of the place. The first time I walked through "Goblin Town", it had recently been built over a cornfield that had been a favorite walk of mine. The path does take you "down and down", and so the song from "The Hobbit" resonated in my mind: "Down, down to Goblin Town". I will never forget the moment I first came around a corner and saw those pink and blue houses with the filigree trim. Since then I've met people who live in this neighborhood, and they are perfectly ordinary people, not goblins at all. And it's not nearly as dark as my imagination made it, when I was first resenting the loss of my cornfield. And yet there's still something strange and magical about the place: where else would you find your way out of the maze of streets by looking for the corner of 52nd Avenue and 52nd Avenue? (Oh, and I know those aren't hyacinths in my photo. But they're the only flowers I saw on my walk nine years later, in March of 2009.)

            Goblin Town

From mortal lands, I see their town
Spread like a toy beneath my feet:
A maze of rooftops, gray and brown,
With not a sign of tree or street.

The path that leads to Goblin Town
Is through a narrow wooden gate.
My footsteps take me down and down
To where the sleeping goblins wait.

The pointed turrets dwarf the trees,
And steep-pitched gables block the skies.
Their lacy wooden filligrees
Are pink and blue as sugar ice.

Once from a tower balcony
A hulking goblin glowered down,
To see what stranger this might be
Who dared to walk through Goblin Town.

And once a little goblin boy,
All armed to catch a butterfly,
Stood still and silent with his toy
And stared at me as I passed by.

In Goblin Town the houses loom
And cast long shadows on the street,
But in the shadows flowers bloom;
The purple hyacinths are sweet.

I leave the shadowed streets below
And climb back through the narrow gate,
Back to the mortal lands I know,
To where my friends and family wait.

             Karen Deal Robinson
             April 20, 2000

Goblin Town

From mortal lands, I see their town Spread like a toy beneath my feet:
A maze of rooftops, gray and brown, With not a sign of tree or street.

The path that leads to Goblin Town Is through a narrow wooden gate.
My footsteps take me down and down To where the sleeping goblins wait.

The pointed turrets dwarf the trees, And steep-pitched gables block the skies.

Their lacy wooden filligrees Are pink and blue as sugar ice.

Once from a tower balcony A hulking goblin glowered down,
To see what stranger this might be Who dared to walk through Goblin Town.

And once a little goblin boy, All armed to catch a butterfly,
Stood still and silent with his toy And stared at me as I passed by.

In Goblin Town the houses loom And cast long shadows on the street,

But in the shadows flowers bloom; The purple hyacinths are sweet.

I leave the shadowed streets below

And climb back through the narrow gate,

Back to the mortal lands I know, To where my friends and family wait.

Karen Deal Robinson
April 20, 2000