Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/poetry-halloween Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky offers a poem about the masks we wear. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. ROBERTY PINSKY: Part of Halloween's point seems to be, "We have met the enemy and he is us," as the late Walt Kelly had his cartoon character say.That fear of what is inside, and of what we put on outside, is given a brief, powerful adult definition in this poem by Charles Simic, "Empire of Dreams."On the first page of my dreambook It's always evening In an occupied country. Hour before the curfew. A small provincial city. The houses all dark. The store-fronts gutted.I am on a street corner Where I shouldn't be. Alone and coatless I have gone out to look For a black dog who answers to my whistle. I have a kind of halloween mask Which I am afraid to put on.