Those shadowy emissaries
That pass the mind’s great lidless eye
In slow procession through the night
Do fill with color and with sound
The sleeping brain’s vast sweeping bound,
And populate its cityscapes
And alleys with amorphous shapes
That shifting form and countenance
Convey the tides of fleeting thought;
And oft become dark shapes of dread,
Parades of faceless horrors, such
That when I glance their looks are changed –
Each lineament is rearranged –
All meaning or remembrance lost,
Or masked by sweet forgetfulness.
The secret that there lurks within
The labyrinths of memory,
Still tainted by the stench of guilt -
And strengthened by the voice of fear -
Still screams from some dark hidden cell
The lurid blasphemies of hell,
And births itself anew each night,
Each morning dying with the light,
Yet nightly grows in hateful strength,
Corrodes the sturdy locks of will,
And claws through those great iron doors
That lead to waking consciousness.