A short little thing

Well this is a poem I made specifically to precede my novel Perennials (posted here:
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/post734675.html#p734675), but I wanted to see what people thought of it on its own. Obviously it has much more context and makes sense once you've read the story, but I'm mainly curious to see how it affects people right off the bat and what their immediate feelings/interpretations are, since theoretically it would be the first thing in the story that people would actually read and I want to know if it does its job of inciting the reader to delve further into the book, along with how good the poem is by its own merits (I'm terrible at critiquing any poetry at all, let alone my own stuff). So yeah, let me know what ya'll think.

Hi there,
First of all, unless you are e. e. cummings you should use punctuation and capitalization in your poems; it's just good form. Secondly, just wanted to point out a minor nit-picky errors: that should be "forth" not "fourth". Okay, on the the real meat'n'potatoes of it all.

1. How can a heart be full of braids? I don't care if you're going to explain their plaited hearts later in your book, that is a weird concept and must either be explained or excluded.
2. Fear who when they cast their spell? The children of luna?
3. "Hatred black as bird from hell" is grammatically weird
4. Okay, so first there were children of Luna, which is kind of beautiful, but now there are eternal youth born from blood? Are these the same children?
5. LIfeless gods could be a very nice paradox but it seems sort of like an add-on to the poem; you're talking about the children of Luna weeping over a rotting body and I don't see how the lifeless gods fit in, or the hatred, or the spell.

Yeah, basically each line is rather poetic and meaningful, but put together the whole thing seems a little bit random. I can't figure out what you're talking about, honestly. If this is a poetic preface to a novel, I suggest zeroing in on one idea and elaborating in on it; the children of Luna, or the hatred-bird simile, or the lifeless gods. Without having read your novel, it's difficult to tell which one you might want to focus on.
Hope this helps
-Aussie

First things first: that is one long author's note. I suggest you let the poem speak for itself. Rather than having the author's note in all it's impressive glory being the first thing your reader sees, I suggest you move it to after the poem and hide it under a spoiler. Including the author's note colors your readers' perceptions, and considering you intend this poem to preface a novel, it makes it difficult to critique from the naive standpoint a reader of your novel would have as the author's note has given away your intentions right off the bat.

That said, I actually like the minimal punctuation. It adds a layer of ambiguity that lends the poem an air of prophecy without making it too literal or clear. It does make this poem difficult to critique from a technical standpoint though, and I'm not sure if the spelling of "fourth" was deliberate; I can easily see it going both ways.

This poem definitely snagged my attention, so I say it did its job. As for interpretations, with poems that precede larger works, I tend to withhold interpretations until reading at least part of the larger work. Coupled with the title though, the poem seems to be about a cyclical event of some sort, perhaps the ruin and renewal of the children of luna?

Overall, not bad at all.