15
The Great Gaunt Shadow
(Out of Time, Hell and Space/Revelation 9)(In
Poetic Prose))
(From a sealed cylinder)
From a crimson graft caught moon, on an ominous and
gibbous night
A beast appeared, not of man or earth, with the
head of a lion, that smokes with brimstone, out of its mouth, appeared—
With a tail liken to a serpent’s, with a head of
teeth, —surely to bit and sting, man!
Thus, next came fleeing before my eyes, like a pale
horizon, Lucifer’s demon, panting without pause near the moon’s edge—
So resigned whatever my befall them.
“Why do they tarry?” I said.
Alas, to instruct, he, who Lucifer has summoned, from
the black breath of Tartarus.
His face portrayed, a ghostlier than death or
decay, with a nauseous pliability! His claws uncovered by the moon’s light.
There he paces, this great gaunt shadow from the
fathomless depths of hell who came not at its own hour or will, but verily I
now summoned from Tartarus’ hidden chambers, deep below Earth’s crust, called
Hell—
A massager of Lucifer’s, he whispers: “When I come,
I will curdle earth with unknown fears, and the time is drawing near! Why else
would I be here?”
#4978/11-2-2016
