exploration
The ancient wanderers explored
The darkness and its depths, light-abhorred
Subterranean deeps of the soul;
With ancient drums and drugs the bowl
Of black oak-water was passed,
Loosing the senses to the shadows of the past.
Darkness ascending to the realms of Men,
Burning, destroying, consuming from within;
All roads through Broceliande lead
To the dark antipodean wastes, where bleeds
The black bile of the Headless Emporer’s wastes,
And inhuman shapes shift and sway with deplorable tastes.
Without measure, without time,
All thoughts forever in rhyme–
Images set free from Verse…
The Acts in Contention spread all over the Earth;
Actions of the Headless Emperor, walking ever-backwards,
Rolling and boiling in all passions, downwards
It spirals in flames of madness, mountainous and cruel–
The Pit yawns, the Abyss smiles, and all such explorers are Doom’s tools
And Fate’s curious fools.
And exploring, too, those who sought the light
turning from shadow and rejecting night’s
luminous tendrils of false dawn
dangling over chasms of alluring song;
with wisdom’s mirror viewing the past
and sword of truth cutting at last
the gorgon’s head of hissing lies;
drinking life with refreshed sighs.
Grace is given to the humble,
But resisted are the proud
And the rich sent empty away;
What then is left to say
Of a man crawling, dragonkin,
Upon a bed of hoarded gold
(Treasures are pleasures, after all)
Struggling with an ancient sin
But despising the cure;
So what if he no longer casts dark spells
Or soothsays in oak-water or with brass bells–
If, in the end, he just makes a substitution
For one more, useless, hopeless delusion.
Pride puffs up and lust depletes
But vainglory causes the most defeats.