Dark Poetry

John Allen's long awaited King in Yellow Project has come to fruition and it looks great! I can say that with complete honesty since I'm not one of the contributors. If you love the poetry of decadence and a touch of the surreal this may well appeal to you. Let the shadows of Beardsley's age--and Chambers' horrors--envelope you!
Only by supporting books like John's--and Joshi's Spectral Realms--can we hope to keep weird poetry alive and relevant. Here's the link--

Songs of the Shattered World: The Broken Hymns of Hastur Limited Edition - Tickety Boo Shop

John and I both have some poems in SR 4. There are great poems by Ashley Dioses, K. A. Opperman and Liam Garriock. I discovered Garriock's poetry a short time ago and find it breathtaking; if it's possible in this day and age for such a thing to exist as a contemporary Clark Ashton Smith, I think Garriock may be on his way to becoming it. His poem, "The Merlin of the Suns," is a tribute to George Sterling; and has a somber beauty and Cosmic sweep of fevered imagination that I can only envy. There are more poems and poets than I can mention plus fine reviews by Donald Sidney-Fryer and Steven J. Mariconda. Good stuff.
 
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“Where the slanting forest eaves,
Shingled tight with greenest leaves,
Sweep the scented meadow-sedge,
Let us snoop along the edge;
Let us pry in hidden nooks,
Laden with our nature books,
Scaring birds with happy cries,
Chloroforming butterflies,
Rooting up each woodland plant,
Pinning beetle, fly, and ant,
So we may identify
What we've ruined, by-and-by.”
― Robert W. Chambers, In Search of the Unknown
 
And for that Matter
by Thomas M. Disch

No Island is an Island either
but each with its Beaches and its Groves
is a Ship that went aground amid the Reefs
that surround it and now a part of the whole
Global Community whose miserable proles
spend their long work-days toiling
at knitting machines cleverer than they are.
It's not as though if they were that bit
more clever they might escape to an Island
somewhere the Sea would not soon
engulf them again. We are all sinking
together, the Ships, the Crews, the Islands.
Solidarity forever. That's the News.
 
"Embittered poet, a maid's breast haunts you
Dark poet, life seethes and life burns
and the sky reabsorbs itself in rain;
Embittered poet, your pen scratches
at the heart of life".

Antonin Artaud
 
Spleen II


It rains all year in the oppressive land
Of which I am the young decrepit king.
My tutors bow and scrape on every hand;
I much prefer my dogs; but dogs no more
Than stag or falcon, horse or anything,
Amuse me now. My favourite dwarf can sing
Grotesque and filthy songs; I pay no heed.
My people die in herds around my door:
I do not care; I'm sick; on my huge bed,
Half smothered by hanging fleur-de-lys,
I lie all day imagining I'm dead.

My harlots peel off stockings, show black lace,
Let the last garment linger: not a smile
Plays on the skull that serves me for a face.

I keep an alchemist: his subtle art
Can Purify, refine, turn lead to gold,
But cannot purge the dross that clogs my heart.

I've even thought of killings, Roman style,
(One thinks about such things as one grows old);
But if my streets ran blood, and all the drains,
Were gushing blood, it wouldn't thaw the cold
And frozen muck of Lethe in my veins.

Charles Baudelaire
 
Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping,
Of February, in sobs and ink,
Write poems, while the slush in thunder
Is burning in the black of spring.

Through clanking wheels, through church bells ringing
A hired cab will take you where
The town has ended, where the showers
Are louder still than ink and tears.

Where rooks, like charred pears, from the branches
In thousands break away, and sweep
Into the melting snow, instilling
Dry sadness into eyes that weep.

Beneath - the earth is black in puddles,
The wind with croaking screeches throbs,
And-the more randomly, the surer
Poems are forming out of sobs.

Boris Pasternak
 
I recently discovered Chapel of Bones or Capela dos Ossos ("We bones, that are here, for yours await"). Inside there is a poem for reflection:

Aonde vais, caminhante, acelerado?
Pára...não prossigas mais avante;
Negócio, não tens mais importante,
Do que este, à tua vista apresentado.

Recorda quantos desta vida têm passado,
Reflecte em que terás fim semelhante,
Que para meditar causa é bastante
Terem todos mais nisto parado.

Pondera, que influido d'essa sorte,
Entre negociações do mundo tantas,
Tão pouco consideras na morte;

Porém, se os olhos aqui levantas,
Pára...porque em negócio deste porte,
Quanto mais tu parares, mais adiantas.


Where are you going in such a hurry traveler?
Stop … do not proceed;
You have no greater concern,
Than this one: that on which you focus your sight.

Recall how many have passed from this world,
Reflect on your similar end,
There is good reason to reflect
If only all did the same.

Ponder, you so influenced by fate,
Among the many concerns of the world,
So little do you reflect on death;

If by chance you glance at this place,
Stop … for the sake of your journey,
The more you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

by Fr. António da Ascenção (translation by Fr. Carlos A. Martins, CC)

1280px-Capela_dos_ossos_esqueletos.jpg
 
Right Before...

The daydream’s tone is vague chinoiserie.
Remembering the blue. Recall the white.
Ink bitten lips upon recollection
The small chess heads rising from teeth armor.
The chess tea sets quake in small berths,
Music’s lack and the ambulances.
Ink bitten lips upon recollection.
Ill drugged music, a snicker.

A daydream’s
tone is chinoiserie,
dreams in white and blue.
 
The only hymn I was ever moved by.


And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown,

A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought,
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot?

Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be:

Waked by the trumpet's sound,
I from my grave shall rise,
And see the Judge, with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!

How shall I leave my tomb?
With triumph or regret?
A fearful or a joyful doom,
A curse or blessing meet?

Will angel bands convey
Their brother to the bar?
Or devils drag my soul away,
To meet its sentence there?

Who can resolve the doubt
That tears my anxious breast?
Shall I be with the damned cast out,
Or numbered with the blest?

I must from God be driven,
Or with my Savior dwell;
Must come at his command to heaven,
Or else—depart to hell!

-- Charles Wesley
 
Nyctalops
by Clark Ashton Smith

Ye that see in darkness
When the moon is drowned
In the coiling fen-mist
Far along the ground—
Ye that see in darkness,
Say, what have ye found?

—We have seen strange atoms
Trysting on the air—
The dust of vanished lovers
Long parted in despair,
And dust of flowers that withered
In worlds of otherwhere.

We have seen the nightmares
Winging down the sky,
Bat-like and silent,
To where the sleepers lie;
We have seen the bosoms
Of the succubi.

We have seen the crystal
Of dead Medusa's tears.
We have watched the undines
That wane in stagnant weirs,
And mandrakes madly dancing
By black, blood-swollen meres.

We have seen the satyrs
Their ancient loves renew
With moon-white nymphs of cypress,
Pale dryads of the yew,
In the tall grass of graveyards
Weighed down with evening's dew.

We have seen the darkness
Where charnel things decay,
Where atom moves with atom
In shining swift array,
Like ordered constellations
On some sidereal way.

We have seen fair colors
That dwell not in the light—
Intenser gold and iris
Occult and recondite;
We have seen the black suns
Pouring forth the night.
 
Not sad but melancholic...

Narcissus and Echo
Fred Chappell

Shall the water not remember Ember
my hand's slow gesture, tracing above of
its mirror my half-imaginary airy
portrait? My only belonging longing
is my beauty, which I take ache
away and then return, as love of
of teasing playfully the one being unbeing.
whose gratitude I treasure Is your
moves me. I live apart heart
from myself, yet cannot not
live apart. In the water's tone, stone?
that brilliant silence, a flower Hour,
whispers my name with such slight light
moment, it seems filament of air, fare
the world become cloudswell. well.
 
Ecclesiastes by Leconte de Lisle (translated by Clark Ashton Smith)

Better a living dog (the Preacher said)
Than a dead lion. All things are shadow, save
To eat and drink. And the everlasting grave
With life's ephemeral nothingness is fed.

So mused he, sitting alone and somberly
On the high tower with eyes that roamed afar
As from a headland over world and star,
In the ancient nights, on his chair of ivory.

Old lover of the sun, who sorrowed thus,
Death too is but illusion, cheating us.
Happy is he, at one step freed of strife.

Always I hear, with frightened ears attending,
Amid the frenzy and horror never-ending,
The long, long roaring of eternal life.
 
Since I became enamored of deserts, first of the Mohave Desert and later of the Colorado Plateau and the Sonoran Desert, I have loved this poem by Clark Ashton Smith. (Or perhaps it is only my love of solitude?) My favorite of his poems after "Nero," "The Abominations of Yondo," and "The Hashish Eater."

Desert Dweller
Clark Ashton Smith

There is no room in any town (he said)
To house the towering hugeness of my dream.
It straitens me to sleep in any bed

Whose foot is nearer than the night's extreme.
There is too much of solitude in crowds
For one who has been where constellations teem,

Where boulders meet with boulders, and the clouds
And hills convene; who has talked at evening
With mountains clad in many-colored shrouds.

Men pity me for the scant gold I bring:
Unguessed within my heart the solar glare
On monstrous gems that lit my journeying.

They deem the desert flowerless and bare,
Who have not seen above their heads unfold
The vast, inverted lotus of blue air;

Nor know what Hanging Gardens I behold
With half-shut eyes between the earth and moon
In topless iridescent tiers unrolled.

For them, the planted fields, their veriest boon;
For me, the verdure of inviolate grass
In far mirages vanishing at noon.

For them, the mellowed strings, the strident brass,
The cry of love, the clangor of great horns,
The thunder-burdened ways where thousands pass.

For me, the silence welling from dark urns,
From fountains past the utmost world and sun...
To overflow some day the desert bourns ...

And take the sounding cities one by one.
 
One for today:

DIALOGUE
Clark Ashton Smith

One said: "I have seen, from cliffs of doom,
The seven hells flame up in flower
Like a million upas trees that tower,
Massing their realms of poisonous bloom.

I have gone down where dragons writhe,
Mating within the nadir slime;
I have caressed in some mad clime
The Gorgon's ringlets, long and lithe."

Another answered: "I have known
The undated hour of agony
When sightless terror leers and crawls

Out of mere soil and simple stone;
When horror seeps from out four walls
And trickles from the unclouded sky."
 
Winter Dusk

by Walter de la Mare

Dark frost was in the air without,
The dusk was still with cold and gloom,
When less than even a shadow came
And stood within the room.

But of the three around the fire,
None turned a questioning head to look,
Still read a clear voice, on and on,
Still stooped they o’er their book.

The children watched their mother’s eyes
Moving on softly line to line;
It seemed to listen too—that shade,
Yet made no outward sign.

The fire-flames crooned a tiny song,
No cold wind stirred the wintry tree;
The children both in Faërie dreamed
Beside their mother’s knee.

And nearer yet that spirit drew
Above that heedless one, intent
Only on what the simple words
Of her small story meant.

No voiceless sorrow grieved her mind,
No memory her bosom stirred,
Nor dreamed she, as she read to two,
’Twas surely three who heard.

Yet when, the story done, she smiled
From face to face, serene and clear,
A love, half dread, sprang up, as she
Leaned close and drew them near.​
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbPCwc_Cdz0

Here Was Based On | Huffington Post


Here’s The Spooky Poem ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Was Based On
Tim Burton told the 1982 story in an eerie animation read by Christopher Lee.

“It was the nightmare before Christmas / And all through the house / Not a creature was peaceful / Not even a mouse,” Tim Burton wrote in a riff on the popular holiday rhyme, “The Night Before Christmas.” His poetic parody would go on to inspire one of his most beloved films, not least because it can be enjoyed during two separate holidays.

In the above 10-minute video, the late Christopher Lee reads Burton’s original poem, on which the “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is based, detailing the frustrations of Jack Skellington, the spookiness of Halloween Town, and the terror bestowed upon young children after Santa Claus is kidnapped and replaced by a bonier doppelgänger.
Notably, Burton’s original 1982 story has no romantic component ― Sally, Jack’s rag doll admirer in the movie, doesn’t make an appearance. Otherwise, the movie is faithful to the original vision, a lyrically wrought first draft.

“Then out from the grave with a curl and a twist / came a whimpering, whining, spectral mist,” Lee reads when introducing Jack’s dog and best friend, Zero.

The poem, capable of eliciting fear and wonder, was written years before “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was released in 1993, when the good-intentioned Jack was finally introduced to a wider audience. At the time, Disney didn’t market the movie for kids, fearing that it would be too scary for young viewers.

Today, of course, Jack and his friends are celebrated by movie-lovers of all ages.
 
The supreme masters of Dark Poetry have to be the German lyric poets and I imagine most German readers would pick this as the darkest of dark German poetry. It is, of course, Celan's Holocaust poem Todesfuge. John Felstiner's translation of it into English is widely considered a masterpiece of translation.

Deathfugue

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling, he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he commands us to play up for the dance.
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
Your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab the earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are so blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margareta
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly this Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then as smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith

Here's Celan reading -- he actually slips up in the reading at one point -- the German original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHgYRtefUqs
 
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