His wailing desperation
echoes throughout hell—
a fox peony
opens its golden petals.

Down past the seven mountains
and seven rivers of hell—
the solitary journey
of sweet little Tomino.

If in this hell they be found,
may they then come to me, please,
those sharp spikes of punishment
from Needle Mountain.

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all —
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart —
He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off —
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then — the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little — less — nothing! — and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

O beat him into the ground.
O strike him till he dies,
or else your life itself
drains through those colourless eyes.

I struck him again and again.
Slender in black and red
he lies, and his icy glance
turns outward, clear and dead.

But nimble my enemy
as water is, or wind.
He has slipped from his death aside
and vanished into my mind.

He has vanished whence he came
my nimble enemy;
and the ants came out to the snake
and drank at his shallow eye.

Of famine fed upon all entrails?
Men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress he died.

Howl to the moon

Run the windswept moor

Come dance with me under starlight

In this place of myth and lore

Run like the wild river

through the trees of pine

I am a child of the night

And this wilderness is mine

So come, grow claws of onyx

And flashing teeth of white

I roam the woods at dark

And sleep while it is light

Throw on your pelts of gray and dun

of black and snowy white

And run with me my friend

For all the moonstruck night

So howl with me to the moon

Run with me through the pine

I love the wood and moon and stars

And all I love is mine

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless?
A lump of death?a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge?
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air

eating the sludgy contents
of your beautiful mind's conscience
and dreaming in your thoughts
while choking on blood clots
slurping up tangled tendons
drowning in remembrance
tales of your history