Through midnight fields the silent figure goes,
No hunger drives him through the sleeping land;
A body walks where once a person rose,
Yet something else now holds the reins in hand.
The living fear the power that can command
A soul removed from all its former ties;
For death alone is not the deepest dread—
But life compelled beneath another\'s eyes.
In Haitian tales, the zonbi bears this weight,
A person robbed of freedom and control;
The body serves another\'s will and fate,
While absence settles where there lived a soul.
Not every story tells the same dark tale,
And meanings shift through generations\' speech;
But at its heart lies terror of the veil
That separates the self from rightful choice.
Thus folklore gives the wandering form
A meaning deeper than the graveyard\'s dead:
The greatest horror is not death\'s cold storm,
But losing mastery of the self instead.