A distant tumult; angry cries, exchange of fire.
What more did you see?
That is a haunting poem. One that reaches a hand through time, shakes me awake and drags me to the bookcase, where I search for an obscure book that I'm sure holds the haunting poem.
Ozymandias was my first haunting poem.
Since I met the King of Kings, there have been other haunting poems for me. Bold time travelers all. And, they have another commonalty. They don't hide their true nature. For example, recall for a moment, your first reading of "She walks in beauty like the night..." I'll bet you didn't think you'd just stumbled on to nursery rhyme when you read that, and I'll bet you didn't stop reading there.
You don't have to be asleep to be visited by a haunting poem. You can be idly reading the blog post of friend, like David Atkinson, and happen on "There was a man who dwelt alone beneath the moon in shadow..." which is a line of a poem written by JRR Tolkien. A poem long forgotten, now rescued, and dragged into the twenty-first century, where it just might trigger the appearance of another of my haunting poems, like the one at the beginning of this post.
That poem, was written by Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, and is from the first page of my favorite Adams book, Traveller. The gray man of the poem is Robert E. Lee. The gray horse, Traveller. Two historic figures, who, when portrayed in poem became one of my haunting poems and as such, not unwelcome midnight visitors.