were long ago foreseen.
The smoky, incense-thickened air
the water-seller's cry
the wailing of the call to prayer
unchanging as the sky.
The sky itself a miracle
a deep and cloudless jewel.
The sunrise like the eye of God
all-seeing, golden, cruel
for not all dreams are happy, nor
do stories always end
with monsters killed and treasures won
and coming home again.
Both beautiful and hideous
unsullied and unclean
Cairo is a story-book
and Cairo is a dream.
---
I left the noise and crowds behind
and walked into the dunes.
Night came and I was all alone
save for the crescent moon.
Save for the moon, and for the past
and for the desert wind
that whispered like a pack of ghouls
reciting every sin.
Before me, blotting out the stars
I saw the pyramids.
One seemed to call me forth, and I
approached as I was bid.
I walked toward the monoliths
an ant before a lion
cowed like an ancient Israelite
enslaved and far from Zion.
No God saw fit to rescue me.
I walked till I arrived
below the tomb of Nitocris
where she was sealed alive.
---
As subtle as a cobra's hiss
the one who lay within:
the pitiless Queen Nitocris
queen of the ghoul and djinn.
The merciless Queen Nitocris
who, some have dared to write,
still has her throne within the stone
as pharaoh of the night.
No guide would come here in the night.
The tourists lay in bed.
I stood, the only living thing
among the royal dead.
I cringed and looked around like one
who braces for attack.
I looked up at the silent tomb
and it, I thought, looked back.
In terror of I knew not what
in darkness and alone
I cried. The desert drank my tears
and stayed as dry as bone.
No guide or tourist dared to come
without the light of day.
Who was it then that came to me
and carried me away?
---
They wore a shape that had not seen
the day since days began
with leering face that showed no trace
of any race of Man.
They held me with inhuman hands
and carried me inside.
I walked in silent blackness till
I felt that I had died.
I felt that I had died and gone
to walk among the damned
forever in the secret places
underneath the sand.
Down in the dark, down in the dark
down through the rock and slime
away from light and human sight
and sanity and time.
At last they stopped and let me drop
down to the cavern floor.
I gasped for air. I felt despair
and soon I felt no more.
---
A distant music woke me up:
shrill pipes and chanted words.
The faintest beat of shuffling feet--
but were they feet I heard?
But were they feet, or hooves, or paws
or something with no name?
I watched and listened in the dark
as on and on they came.
I listened as the choir shrieked.
Drums pounded. Pipers whined.
I watched as well, and in this Hell
I wished to be struck blind.
The torches held by mummy's hands
and other hands far worse
shone forth and I, who longed for light,
now called that light a curse.
The day my eyes first opened up
I called an evil day.
I could not stand the things I saw
yet could not look away.
---
The parts of man and beast and corpse
none in its natural place
each rotted, writhing, wretched part
set in a human face.
And last of all and worst of all
and queen of all the vile
unholy things that slithered in
the dark beneath the Nile
and last of all and worst of all
the queen of the undead
foul Nitocris whose jackal fangs
were stained a bloody red.
Her skin was stretched and torn and marked
and rough like ancient hide.
I looked into her eyeless face
and maggots squirmed inside.
I know not why I did not die
or fall or shriek in fear.
Then all at once forgotten words
seemed whispered in my ear.
---
Strange words which I had read, but not
thought worthy of my trust
seemed spoken though their author had
long since returned to dust.
He lived unloved and died unmourned
and knew no wealth or fame.
An Arab whom the world called mad.
Al-Hazred was his name.
He lived unloved and went unmourned
into eternal night
but in the dark I thought of him
and knew him to be right.
I looked upon that dreadful face
and knew the reason why
al-Hazred said, "That is not dead
which can eternal lie."
Al-Hazred said, "That is not dead
which can eternal lie.
A soul may burn and yet return
and even death may die."
---
I saw the world that he had seen
long centuries before:
an apple shining red and round
but rotten to the core.
All health was sickness. Life was death.
The sacred was profane.
The Arab whom the world called mad
I knew him to be sane.
All health was sickness. Life was death.
The greatest was the least.
My human soul gave up control
and I became a beast.
I stumbled, howling in the dark
in misery and fear
perhaps for days, perhaps for weeks
or for ten thousand years.
Perhaps for days, perhaps for weeks
beyond all and guilt or shame.
I lost all memory of the sun
forgot I had a name.
---
They found me lying in the desert
ranting without words
as senseless as a new-born lamb
gone wandering from the herd.
As senseless as a new-born lamb
but has that lamb less sense
than animals that stay at home
content behind their fence?
Who stay at home and rest content
and never wander far.
Would they insist the lamb was mad
who saw the abattoir?
They talked to me, pronounced me cured
allowed me to walk free.
They said that I had dreamed and I
pretended to agree.
Our old, well-known, familiar world
substantial as it seems
is nothing but a story-book
and nothing but a dream.
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The Fa
ce in the Hill
On a hill in the desert there is a rock formation that, from certain angles, resembles a face. The local tribes consider it to be alive, and to possess magical powers. Hardly surprising, since those wretched people see omens in every cloud and tree. By that I meant, of course, to contrast their superstition with our rationality. But the increasing burden we are said to be placing on Nature is the most-discussed issue of our time, so it could be said that we too see omens in every cloud and tree, or perhaps in the lack of them. In any case this 'face' is believed to give true counsel to the one who approaches it in the correct manner and at the correct time.
I found that this myth excited a strange fascination in me. Or perhaps not so strange, given my position. I can call upon experts in any field. Yet I am never sure whether they are giving the best advice, or the advice they believe I want to hear, or the advice some underling wishes me to hear. Or, at worst, deliberately bad advice that would play into the hands of my rivals, which is to say the opposition party, my colleagues in the governing party, and all other parties. The reader will perhaps not wonder that I was seduced by the dream of advice both knowledgeable and untainted.
It would not do to approach the thing openly. I represent the party of stability, of commerce. Perhaps, in the minds of some, I represent stability and commerce themselves. I have ever argued that Nature is not dying at our hands, that we must not change our ways, that to argue otherwise is to embrace irrationality. I would be flayed alive by the media. As if that crows' chorus of screeching halfwits have the right to accuse anyone else of irrationality! Yet this is forgotten when one's enemies are the victims, and I am the enemy of many.
My life is restricted in many ways, but not in material things. It was easy enough for me to arrange the use of an air-car which could bring me to the hill in question. I went in the night, both to hide myself and because the face was said to be silent during the day ('sleeping', the desert people say).
I had imagined that it would be roughly the size of a living face, but it was vast. The 'mouth' was wider than I am tall. Its resemblance to a face was quite remarkable, and confronting it alone in the night was rather unnerving. Nonetheless I approached it, and performed the ritual that is rumored to be necessary. The final part of this ritual was for me to lie curled up, fetus-like, with my ear to the great 'mouth'. My position reminded me of a baby, lifted up by its mother who wishes to kiss it. I asked my question, and listened intently. Despite its huge size, the thing was said to have a voice as quiet as the approach of death. I heard nothing.
I suddenly felt very cold, very tired, and very stupid. Then I heard a voice: my own, angrily denouncing my own idiocy. I stood up and brushed myself off. I considered kicking the so-called oracle, but there was still something intimidating about it. I walked back to the air-car and prepared to fly back to my home in the city.
As I sat in the cockpit, I realised that, in a sense, I had received a message. The face had said nothing. And 'nothing' was the answer to my question. What danger lies in our treatment of Nature? What value is there in turning from our present path? What evil might unfettered commerce bring us? Nothing, nothing, nothing. The warnings of my opponents were as the wind of the desert, air and noise. I flew home with a renewed sense of confidence and purpose. I am more certain now than I have ever been that we are on the right road and, if we close our ears to false prophets, no disaster awaits us, but only ever-growing levels of prosperity and security. Given the courage, determination and faith that I know we possess, we will meet the challenge of the future, and our culture and civilization will never fade from Mars.
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The Prince of the Howling Forest
They left him alone on a miserable isle
that was dark as the grave and as bitter as bile
where one end to the other seemed scarcely a mile
with the name of the Howling Forest.
Where the wind never stopped and the wolves never ceased
so a lifetime could pass with no second of peace
and a soul be worn down till a man was a beast
and ran naked and mute in the forest.
Where the seagulls that mocked him with freedom and flight
seemed to screech of the cliffs to his left and his right
and the eyes of the wolves as they watched him at night
were like stars in the glowering forest.
They left him alone on a miserable isle.
Not a one had his strength. Not a one had his guile.
If the sea feared his arm or regarded his wiles
He would not have stayed long in the forest.
But the cliffs would not die nor the ocean be slain
so he stared at the sea and he roared out his pain.
Then he slept on the rocks with a blanket of rain
and his dreams took him out of the forest.
Then the sun, red and bloody, cloud-hidden no more
hung huge in the sky like a festering sore
as, with fire and steel, bringing vengeance and war
he returned as a king from the forest.
Every infant he flayed; every ancient he broke
and he honored no kindred; acknowledged no folk.
When they begged him for mercy he laughed and he spoke
and his voice was as cold as the forest.
"When you run out of tears and your heart turns to stone
and the fangs of the wind bite your body and bone
and you squat in the darkness afraid and alone
I will still have borne worse in the forest."
On a miserable island they left him alone.
Though he carried no crown, though he sat on no throne
Death has crowned him at last, for in death he is known
as the Prince of the Howling Forest.
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The Uncharted Isle
As I was sailing the Wine-Faced Sea, I passed an island which appeared on no charts. I asked a woman who sat on the beach where I was.
"This is the Isle of the Ones that Got Away," she told me. "Whenever anyone thinks of an old flame, and wonders what that old flame is doing now, the answer is that they have ended up here, and are living a life of bliss".
I would have made further enquiry, but she continued.
"If I may answer your next question," she said, "we do not think of them. Not even once".
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Compatibility
Once upon a time there was a man who only desired to make love in the back yard, in a wading pool filled with red wine.
He went on the internet looking for love, but found only rejection, until someone directed him to a site specifically for singles with wading pool/back yard/wine fetishes.
There he met a woman who shared his desires. They chatted online, spoke on the phone, and at last agreed to meet.
The man was very excited. He began telling the woman how he would slowly inflate the wading pool, and then equally slowly fill it with bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.
"Wait," said the woman. "Isn't Cabernet Sauvignon a red wine?"
"Yeah. So?" said the man.
"Oh. I probably should've said. I only want to make love in someone's back yard in a wading pool filled with white wine."
"Get away from me, pervert," said the man.
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The Moon Sailed Sadly Through the Sky
The Moon sailed sadly through the sky
on trails blazed by the Sun
remembering ancient chants of praise
but hearing not a one.
She mourned the passing of the days
when innocents would die.
A sacrifice for each new month
to keep her in the sky.
A heart cut out for each new month
and laid before her throne.
The snow lay pri
stine and unstained.
The Moon sailed on alone.
She heard a howl from jaws still hot
and dripping from the kill.
The wolves that ruled the lightless woods
were faithful to her still.
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