I Am

I am the throne in the foot
I am the blur in the sight
I am the worm at the root
I am the thief in the night

I am the rat in the wall
the lepper that leers at the gate
I am the ghost in the hall
herald of horror and hate

I am the rust on the corn
I am the smut on the wheat
laughing man's labor to scorn
weaving a web for his feet

I am canker and mildew and blight
danger and death and decay
the rot of the rain by night
the blast of the sun by day

I warp and wither with drouth
I work in the swamp's foul yeast
I bring the black plague from the south
and the leprosy in from the east.

I rend the flowers from the hemlock boughs
wine stepped in the petals of dooms
where the fat black repents drowse
I gather the upas blooms

I have plumbed the northern ice
for a spell like frozen lead
in lost grey fields of rice
I have learned from mongol dead.

Where a bleak black mountain stands
I have looted grisly caves
I have digged in the desert sands
to plunder terrible graves

Never the sun goes forth
never the moon glows red
but out of the south or the north
I come with the slavering dead

I come with hideous spells
black chants and ghastly tunes
I have looted the hidden hells
and plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest
to cheer me by word or look
there was never a man or beast
in the blood-black ways I took

There were crimson gulfs unplumbed
there were black wings over a sea
there were pits where mad things drummed
and foaming blasphemy

There were cast ungodly tombs
where slimy monsters dreamed
there were clouds like blood-drenched plumes
where unborn demons screamed

There were ages dead to time
and lands lost out of space
there were adders in the slime
and a dim unholy face

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone
and the brain froze in my skull
but I won through, I alone
and poured my chalice full

Of horrors and dooms and spells
black buds and bitter roots
from the hells beneath the hells
I bring you my deathly fruits.