Well I was going to post something like Rossetti’s Goblin Market, but that really doesn’t seem like the most Halloween-ish of poems. Sure there are poems by Poe like The Raven and The Haunted Palace or even that great witch bit from Macbeth “Double, double toil and trouble”. How about something we don’t know basically by heart. This is Black Cat by Rainer Rilke
Black Cat
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
Deep in the well 