a poem by Matthias Maier
THE RIVER
In the rivers flood running fast,
a shape came slowly floating past,
from where I stood, staring
with curiosity. As I went nearer
that amorphous Thing I beheld, whose form defies
all sane contours
And mad I went ; screaming in horror.
For the shape was neither dead nor
alive, bloated and distended
and rotten it floated on nigh.
Then the horrid, half-decayed
form reanimated hideously as I stood there
prostrate, unable to move or to
lift a limb.
A stench welled up,
as of a thousend charnel pits
and sepulchres, strangling the grass
and the flowers, befouling them.
The thing reared up slowly and shuffling,
menacing it made some steps
where I stood, certain sounds it uttered,
words full of repulsiveness and wickedness.
The shape then raised a fetid paw, plunging
half-blind forward, where I cowered in frantic fear,
transfixed as by some malevolent will.
My mind went dark and numb, as the odious Thing drew closer
and closer. As I at last regained my senses,
there lingered still that loathsome, foul
odour, that no clean air could vanquish.
Blindly and delirious and half-mad I stumpled
over that befouled river-bank until I could
smell at last again the wholesome air, whilst my head
still swirled and reeled from the minds ordeal.
Thereafter I dared not
to go back, where the grass
and flowers where dead shriveled
as by some vile sorcery.
But for ever after I dared not
to vernture down
that river-bank
And evil dreams thereafter beset my sleep,
where selfsame shapes bleat and prance
´neath the ghastly glimmering moon
To some malefic figure the make their raucous obeisances,
its hateful eyes leering with at me,
No face the figure shows, but just a silken yellow mask
and on its head a baleful crown sits.
Once I beheld the face that lurks underneath
that foul facade,
With a shriek full of soul-wrenching
anguish I awoke.
Now not even sleep brings surcease
and rest, for I dread those realms
where no waking mind, save a few, ever may tread.
And where the Elder Gods dance blind and
dumb to the piping of a flute
In the Center of the Cosmos,
where the Demon-Sultan holds it eternal, court
