The Liturgy of the Literary Diabolist: Creative Platypus

The Liturgy of the Literary Diabolist

I reached into the river and pulled out meaning

While Cratipus shook his head and Zeno

Scribbled figures in the sand

Sunlight glinted from a thousand facets

Each facet a world of infinite points

Untraversable by flesh and blood

Forging what we stole

Ta-tom-ta-tom

Forging what we stole

Ta-tom-ta-tom-tom-tom

Rape of the Earth, Apollo, Apollo!

Smintheus the destroyer.

What’s that Thom?

Still mooning over Jean Veudrel

Morte douze ans aux les Dardanelles?

Get up and write,

-Now there’s a lad-

All this pining will drive you mad.

And Jean Veudrel is dead

And Siegfried Sassoon is dead

And G.B. Smith is dead

Wiseman’s in the middle of the fleet

-Thank God-

There’s safety in numbers

I tried to tell you then

Don’t go that way

But I don’t think you really heard me

On the night when all the candles were lit

You were hell-bent on going

And the room was dark

I tried to tell you it’s not the sort of thing respectable people do

Consorting with spirits

I don’t know why I wasted my breath

For an hour’s conference with the Dead

Are you even listening?

I am

All the good boys are in their graves, Charles;

All the good boys who died in the mud and in the blood.

Can’t live up to them, can you?

-In the mud and blood.

As Hyperion to a satyr

You gods rule by beauty

And the spheres still turn in music

As when the worlds began

While Wotan rests upon his spear

Dreaming dreams of Man.