Visions from Beyond

Visions from Beyond

To the memory of Jagdas

Down to the sacred Void the daemon bore me,

Past the bright clusters of dimensional space,

Till neither time nor matter stretched before me,

But only Abyss, without form or place.

Here the vast Lord of All in darkness muttered

Things he had dreamed, but could not understand,

While near him faceless deaf moons fluttered

In blind vortices that ray-streams fanned.

They swirled insanely to the high, thin whining

Of a cracked flute made from corpse-god’s maw,

Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining

Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law.

“I spared thee, Prophet”, the daemon said,

And then I realized that the old world is dead.

I do not know if ever it existed—

That lost sphere floating dimly on Time’s stream—

And yet I see it often, violet-misted,

And shimmering at the back of some vague dream.

There were snowy towers and cold, pure ice rivers,

Subterranean cathedrals of holy unlight,

And aurora skies, like that which quivers

Wistfully just before a winter’s night.

Frigid wastes led to shores unpeopled,

Where polar bears walked, while on windswept hill,

There was a village, ancient and white-steepled,

With evening chimes for which I listen still.

I do not know where land it is—or dare

Ask why its name still rings in midnight air.