The witching hour grown heavy
with its customary anticipation,
takes its tiny minute hand
to tap gently, persistently
on my sleeping body
causing the cat to stir,
purr and stretch
Time
into manifest destinies
with whispers of sound
like padded feet
passing under doors.
Air is moving all around
us making vertigo
an entrance.
The body is moved
by the mind.
A cauldron steams and hisses
acrid blackness
and while all the other
heavily burdened bodies
are tucked deep down
in the sand,
weighted by breath
and erased by tide,
an inside voice
gives rise to words
that lie
in the subconscious
and spell
Magic
with only the thinnest lucid air.
This hour
witch made
alone
disappear
as fast as you passed through
the fear of flying Time.
FIRST WITCH
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw;
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelt’red venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmed pot.
THREE WITCHES
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
SECOND WITCH
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of pow’rful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
THREE WITCHES
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
THIRD WITCH
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chawdron,
For th’ ingredience of our cau’dron.
THREE WITCHES
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
SECOND WITCH
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Enter Hecat and the other three Witches.
HECAT
O, well done! I commend your pains,
And every one shall share i’ th’ gains.
And now about the cauldron sing,
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.
Music and a song: “Black spirits, etc.”
Exit Hecat.
SECOND WITCH
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Knocking.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
Enter Macbeth.
MACBETH
How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?
What is’t you do?
ALL WITCHES
A deed without a name.
MACBETH
I conjure you, by that which you profess
(How e’er you come to know it), answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodg’d, and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders’ heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature’s germains tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken; answer me
To what I ask you.
---
MACBETH
Infected be the air whereon they ride,
And damn’d all those that trust them! I did hear
The galloping of horse. Who was’t came by?
Copyright ©2005-2019 by PlayShakespeare.com.
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Copyright ©2005-2019 by PlayShakespeare.com.
Visit http://www.playshakespeare.com/license for details.
Painting by E.R. Hughes, 'A Witch' c. 1902 in Public Domain.
