The Hyperborean Mythos
Shadows of the Dead
Some shadows have upswept dust, like the dead who awake from their deep
unnatural sleep, fighting to avoid the abysmal Hell, or mysterious Limbo, of
the un-desecrated dead or the dead who are awaiting placement, beneath their
feet: avoiding those vertiginous gulfs and crags!
Only to be seen before the first light, behind the
abating sun, below the noontide, or pale moon, and in the interlunar darkness:
they have unmoved lips of the fortnight.
Thus they lurk in the eclipse of man’s shadows,
behind trees, in allies.
These are the dead who walk in hazardous
obscurities heedlessly, to avoid the living, and the Henchmen of Hell.
They blow with the riven winter wind, or bleak
spectral summer breeze, like leaves fleeing the eternal night!
Not to be lost, or unseen forevermore.
Nauseous, quick, and at times languid, wherever,
they run in dire fear the ebon imps of Tartarus, will slay the soul!
Torture and benumb them!
I noticed in a vision-dream, one among many, who I
knew had died, who moved not with the others, he was in an oubliette.
Death had found and left him there.
And I could not tell if it was a dungeon, for
slaves or kings.
My mind and eyes ebbed the scene, ere he had no
age, nor was he crumbled or encircled with darkness, rather a chimed in
sunlight, but there was no sun, and when he died he was eighty, now forty.
He was not reeling, in the feet of time.
In-between Heaven, Hell, and Limbo, I sensed there
was a mirage of things that were, and after-figuring of forgotten time,
twilight hushed the vision-dream—and it sank into irretrievable oblivion.
. . .
In another vision, I saw many wandering souls of
men and women, hesitantly or in haste.
Knowing now that s/he had been forgotten.
Thus they turned away despairingly, stooping
hastily from the little light they had.
Unable to distinguish the faces of their companions
and comrades.
Forthwith, and henceforward, they—one by
one—dropped to an irremovable Limbo, or the irredeemable Hell.
No exceptions, but the old man of eighty.
And between these two subterranean tombs, —Limbo
and Hell—a mysterious black winged gigantic seraphim ran his ineffable errands,
to confer with demons just who would remain, where?
#5283/6-16
& 17-2016
