---

Is mine the hand

that blights the orchard?

Or mine breath born

of nighted December

the death that blooms

in starless aether?

Shorn from the sublime,

beyond the thrall of hope;

am I bound to infinite solitude

and suffering- not of the body,

but of the spirit?

A breeze fraught with tainted omen

rouses me from the depths of woe.

A mutter of marbled limbs

bestirs the Wurm within my breast.

The Eastern eye peers with sickly fire

revealing wretched faces four,

bent and bearing through the grey

another corpse, this cairn to join.

My visage twisting theirs in fright,

they turn in vain towards morning light.

My hand I cannot, will not stay;

the crows shall feast this sordid day.

...

Musing on these silent streams

in patterns pouring from the deed,

as if they would for me portend,

though cowled in forgotten tongue.

Black wings fold o'er tattered throats;

I see the answer in their descent,

in their rustling, their rending of flesh,

to bring this revenance to an end.

Ten thousand deaths on me bestowed

shall be repaid in likened fold,

a chalice filled for thee and thine-

this world to drown in draught of white