Swirls of smoke

Swirls of smog

Breeding nightmares

In this pestilential fog:

No picturesque landscape this.

Church bells only useful 

for announcing mass-acres of the dead.

Sin shines in like wet, black pavements under gaslight

Look! a broken green-tinged laudanum bottle

Tincture of nightmare, smelling of gin,

Listen to the devil assail thee, roast thee, consume thee

As I float into his cemetery with its wrought iron gates 

Locked inside he is, they say, it is never too late.

To pray for no irrevocable calamity,

for nothing to come to pass.

Drink from the lily pond, red with blood,

fingers are tongues of fire coming out of the water,

not screaming but drowning,

Just like they oughter.

Time burns us up,

he will not see thee

until it is far too late for prosperitee

Good riddance, that's flat-straight from me

at the gates of hell where the roots of death mingle with the roots of life,

tongues of fire set everything alight.

Betwixt waking and sleep the demons escape

flee into songs, poems, dreams, stories, exculpations.

Assail me again, my heedless friend,

no respite this; no wight can stop these songs

cling, clong, clanging within

the ramparts of my empty head,

where blackness illumines blackness.

And where all black sin has fled.