af Howard Philips Lovecraft, Robert Hayward Barlow og Agent C
1934-2013
all which might have been a harbour
should come
still lumps of darkness sprawling
beneath the cruel brilliant rays.
The endless cold inhuman vividness
arose and shut the window
as transferring to me before
the stream of thought.
Minutes or eternities
were the scene I had set
in the western corner
of her bluish rays.
The ancient glow of the beach
and I waited by the delay
and the completion
outside the white forms.
My voices still as time
of great shadows
veiled nothing
from the night.
All the stars were dark
or word now could reveal flesh
for all the torture
it brought of death.
With a forgotten cigarette in my hand
a silent world, dirty windows
and in my arrival my spirit
burned endlessly like flesh again.
Kerosene base enough was no heat
that the night forces and all the laws
disrupted with silver water
of fear beyond the breakers.
It could not have known
that I watched
across the mirrored stars
beneath the surface.
I could be no animal
or something like a man
toward the dark ocean
with horrible ease.
As I watched death in another
the shore down the beach
to discern sparks of moonlit fear
died away in coldness all over me.
I thought it would be very horrible
if something were to enter a window
which was not closed.
I felt the shadows
at me from whatever
I did not watch.
In the end I had nothing.
I was given
a thing
by the veils of ignorance
too close to that swimmer
us deep the moon beat shapes
awesome an ecstasy vast shall reign
waters though sand gathering
within shores even shall that the sea.
