8. The Unnamable One

(Triquatrain)

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1

We still talk of the days when the blighted one stays

   At the house of the fiends in the air;

But please whisper those words, so that not even birds

   Will heed us in our tale—so beware!

It was on a sad morrow, our hearts filled with sorrow

   For the death of our beautiful queen;

So we donned on our armor, each noble and each farmer,

   To make haste to the place where she'd been.

For once she was fair; now rests with a prayer

   That she holds on her lips in her silence;

For once we were strong, so bold and so young,

   Until she was taken with such violence

That she died in her struggles to give birth and her knuckles

   Had become so clenched-up and so white;

And right there she expired on her bedside so tired,

   So worn out in her birth-pains that night.

And the heir that she bore struck a pall in the core

   Of all those in attendance with fright;

So we took the small devil and committed the evil

   That still stalks us with fear in the night.

For the name that the queen had given on the scene

   Of her struggle and screaming and death

Has become a bad word that only was heard

   In the curses of her dying last breath:

"May the pains that I bear drift up to the air!

   May the face of this babe disappear!

I would rather be dead than bear up the head

   Of the Devil's own son over here!"

And for those who have heard our queen utter such words,

   We will take to our graves when we die;

For we fear that unnamable and horribly damnable

   Sion of the queen's frightened eye.

For the baby was evil, a son of the devil,

   With the eyes of a demon's so black

And the body of an imp whose limbs were so limp

   That he barely could move on his back.

So frightened we were at the sight of it there

   That we took it and buried it alive;

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And the screams of despair were the stuff of nightmares

   As it struggled to cry and survive.

But we dared not to bash it with shovels or lash it

   With ropes to obstruct it's foul screams,

For we feared that to draw the baby's blood raw

   On the dirt would then haunt us in dreams.

And since then we have tried to forget and to hide

   All the horrors that we have all seen;

And since then we still live and try to forgive

   Our most heinous wrongdoing of our queen.

2

Now it's been twenty years, and the tracks of our tears

   Are but memories long-buried in toil;

So we thought we were free from the hideous memory

   Of the baby deformed as a gargoyle.

But in the twentieth year since the fading of the fear,

   There arose a depression of sadness,

Which took over the township in a panic so severe

   That the township descended into madness.

For the specter of the baby that had killed their fair lady,

   Their lost queen, has returned to on the town;

And the ones that remember have rekindled the slow ember

   Of those fearful old days in their breakdown.

For the specter will prey on the youth where they stay;

   They are dying right before the old eyes

Of those cursed to remember the killing of one member

   Who should have lived to survive his first cries.

But this world is so cruel, and every soul is a fool

   To believe in the goodness of adults;

And so the specter will gain from the small ones that remain

   By entering their nightmares with results

Too hideous to mistake for a nightmare so fake

   That adults will still refuse to believe;

But deep in their hearts, they will shiver in all parts

   For the horrors that they will receive.

For it comes in the night just outside of their sight

   When the children will breathe out their last;

And when that day shall come, they will all be struck dumb

   As they find out their judgement has passed.

For where children stay, so the blighted one will sway

   All the children to ascend to the air,

Where he takes them away full of laughter so gay,

   While the adults on their knees sink in prayer.

But their prayers go unanswered, and their hopes will be shattered,

   As slowly one-by-one they die out;

And their words as they die will fade out as a sigh

   Upon the alter of repentance that cries out:

"And so we have sinned and are now left behind

   To die out in this plague of slow days;

And so we that remain must all answer for the slain,

   The cause of our dying in this craze!"

And now we that persist in this maddening mist

   Of remembrances ere we shall depart

Are now cursed to remember in quieted whisper

   Of the days when the calamities start.

So we still talk of the days when the blighted one stays

   At the house of the fiends in the air;

But please whisper those words, so that not even birds

   Will heed us in our tale—so beware!

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FINISH