I am the specter who returns Unto some desolate world in ruin borne afar On the black flowing of Lethean skies: Ever I search, in cryptic galleries, The void sarcophagi, the broken urns Of many a vanished avatar: Or haunt the gloom of grumbling pylons vast In temples that enshrine the shadowy past. Viewless, impalpable and fleet, I roam stupendous avenues, and greet Familiar sphinxes carved from everlasting stone, Or the fair, brittle gods of long ago, Decayed and fallen low. And there I mark the tall clepsammiae That time has overthrown, And empty clepsydrae, And dials drowned in umbrage never-lifting; And there, on rusty parapegms, I read the ephemerides Of antique stars and elder planets drifting Oblivionward in night. And there, with purples of the tomb bedight, And crowned with funeral gems, I hold awhile the throne Whereon mine immemorial selves have sate, Canopied by the triple-tinted glory Of the three suns forever paled and flown. I am the specter who returns And dwells content with his forlorn estate In mansions lost and hoary Where no lamp burns; Who feasts within the sepulcher, And finds the ancient shadows lovelier Than gardens all emblazed with sevenfold noon, Or topaz-builded towers That throng below some iris-pouring moon. Exiled and homeless in the younger stars, Henceforth I shall inhabit that grey clime Whose days belong to primal calendars; Nor would I come again Back to the garish terrene hours; For I am free of vaults unfathomable And treasures lost from time: With bat and vampire there I flit through somber skies immeasurable Or fly adown the unending subterranes; Mummied and ceremented, I sit in councils of the kingly dead; And oftentimes for vestiture I wear The granite of great idols looming darkly In atlantean fanes; Or closely now and starkly I cling as clings the attenuating air About the ruins bare. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE WORDS IN THE SKY (A True Experience) by Kenneth B. Pritchard