I Am

I am the throne in the foot

I am the blur in the sight

I am the worm at the root

I am the thief in the night

I am the rat in the wall

the lepper that leers at the gate

I am the ghost in the hall

herald of horror and hate

I am the rust on the corn

I am the smut on the wheat

laughing man's labor to scorn

weaving a web for his feet

I am canker and mildew and blight

danger and death and decay

the rot of the rain by night

the blast of the sun by day

I warp and wither with drouth

I work in the swamp's foul yeast

I bring the black plague from the south

and the leprosy in from the east.

I rend the flowers from the hemlock boughs

wine stepped in the petals of dooms

where the fat black repents drowse

I gather the upas blooms

I have plumbed the northern ice

for a spell like frozen lead

in lost grey fields of rice

I have learned from mongol dead.

Where a bleak black mountain stands

I have looted grisly caves

I have digged in the desert sands

to plunder terrible graves

Never the sun goes forth

never the moon glows red

but out of the south or the north

I come with the slavering dead

I come with hideous spells

black chants and ghastly tunes

I have looted the hidden hells

and plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest

to cheer me by word or look

there was never a man or beast

in the blood-black ways I took

There were crimson gulfs unplumbed

there were black wings over a sea

there were pits where mad things drummed

and foaming blasphemy

There were cast ungodly tombs

where slimy monsters dreamed

there were clouds like blood-drenched plumes

where unborn demons screamed

There were ages dead to time

and lands lost out of space

there were adders in the slime

and a dim unholy face

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone

and the brain froze in my skull

but I won through, I alone

and poured my chalice full

Of horrors and dooms and spells

black buds and bitter roots

from the hells beneath the hells

I bring you my deathly fruits.