O the woe that lay upon the streets
of the foggy town of London—softly
masked in the air of excitement, the
lives, the deaths, the things, O
their beauty, everlasting beyond them;
white wisps that decorate the edges
of the sordid streets
Vision is illuminated in two, four eyes
One looking, one staring towards it, O
the magnificent ocean in its might;
the destroyer of worlds lay with it,
the creator of the endless night
The sun has lost its battle to the stars;
O, those stars that sing, that cry at the
wreckage below—
“We weep,” they say in its weakened glow
The wisps forming now over sacred clouds
“Begone, O light!” cries the creature below
“Begone, O thing of death upon me, glowing
upon my translucent cape, begone!”
Away and away, the sun mourns its loss
of the sweet ivy that grew upon those walls
“Begone, thing of the night!” it cries in
its post-apocalyptic voice—O a cry not
to be reckoned with in any time nor place
There lay the victims below the bereaved
and lower and lower live they—O, the
horrid undead, the undead that stop
that force of time, beyond the pavement,
beyond the stench, they lay
“Get hence, vile animal,” say they, carrying
their voices over the sound of the wind
O that sound that leaped over the mountains,
A word that shall be the last sentiment of
the living dead, a word spoken from beyond
the milky clouds: “Begone!”