The Sigh

(note: I wrote this based on a piece of music by Schubert, and based on the "sigh" motive in classical music, which is a downward half-step used to symbolize sorrow but often creepy-sounding when used in dirges like Bartok did. That should provide some context, as well listening to the Schubert piece, which is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKVnL9JvuO8 )

Schubert takes his time returning home,
pausing, and it's not that he enjoys the pain
again, but that he cannot not remember.
As his eyes lift, he feels his throat drain
slowly, feeding the little pit of terror
in his gullet. Frozen, struck suddenly dumb,
he wheels backwards a little, deafened,
still turning, still moving, but troublingly numb.
Upon finally reaching his home, he sits
at the piano, to write. His fingers trace the keys.
But the note is too jarring. He slides down, startled,
and that's all he hears. No more melodies.
Nothing but this figure, the simple half-step,
creeping like a ghoul in his ear. The sigh.
He tries to move away from it, leaps a third,
but again the note falls, a drawling cry,
settling deeper now, digging itself a den.
Panicked, he stumbles to his feet and out the door,
needing to escape, but his head falls and falls,
half-step by half-step, then the diminished four,
lurching him off-balance and pulling him back down.
Suddenly he finds himself there once again,
where his eyes lift and his throat drains, but here
there is another, and he can't remember when
the last time was he saw another person, but now
he sees a man, weeping openly in the street.
Schubert steps closer to glimpse his face,
but a terrible sight —this man is me!

The same pale face! The same brown hair!
The same dark expression, the same despair!
The ghoul is clawing and wailing and sighing,
its sermon unearthly and its hymn undying.
He screams out, "Who are you? And why are you here?"
He swallows his nausea, but chokes on his fear.
Collapsing, he clutches at paving-stones
but can feel the ghoul taking his breath and his bones.
His ears, he is sure, are useless by now.
By degrees he feels himself sinking down.
The doppelgänger, meanwhile, lifts its socket eyes,
opens its rotted throat — and sighs.