Benjamin De Casseres

“ I watch, I record, and I weave at Eternity’s looms the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line.
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MY DIVINE HATE Ever-changing, ever-vanishing, an evocation from out the Mist, tottering forever to a doom that is never pronounced,
I am the visible Invisible,
The eel that slips through God’s hands,
A dominoed Abstraction whose lineaments the most curious cannot discover,
Renascent over your head when you think I lie dead,
Intruder in Time, enclayed for a moment, flinty, brittle,
Flying the flag of Rebellion, chanting my hates and my dreams. ”

“ And here I now stand peering tensely curious into the crater of Eternity, seeking out Demiurge there in the depths,
When the truth flashes on me: I am but fume, spew, from that Depth—
I and thee, all, but fantastic smoke-shapes flitting above the crater of Eternity ”

“ Swift be thy flight, thou craven and satyr and old purpled lust!
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THE DEAD WHO LIVE Up from the nether world in unending procession,
Like the lurid mists at the dawn-time,
Like the black wraiths that ascend from foul crypts,
Arise and ever arise my impulses.
Across the field of consciousness they stalk, anhungered, lust-ravened, lean of their ghastly dreams—
Thou devils of the gone-by!
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EXVOLVED I am the Spectre at the feasts of the strong men and sneer at their brag. ”

“ Cleaver of lightnings, warbler in the zenith of my passionate being,
Plumed and feathered for thy mystic spiral progressions,
Where wilt thou bear me this night?
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THE CLEFT IN THE WALL They pass through my brain and leave not a mark: cities and women and autumnal skies.
I am related to nothing in the phenomenal flux,
The world-days are vain shapes of desire, a mist on my mirror, my mind—
My mind that reflects cities and women and autumnal skies,
Wrack of old Chaos, wrack of old Time.
My soul is a fountain that balances the ball of the visible cosmos ”

“ PROPHETIC Time lies cataleptic in my brain: Eternity alone reigns there.
Infinite space has shrunken to a single point of fire, from whose heart radiate the trackless voids.
Life I have bosomed in a sigh.
I will exhale with the dawn, step lightly to my zenith, death in-wrapt.
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RESURRECTION NIGHT I slept, and out of their ancient tombs of tissue-plasm streamed a shadowy host of Living Dead. ”

“ Into the light at this moment, thou long-buried ONE; sternly, defiantly, joyously, I lift Thee into the light!
Long hast thou lain in crypts, and thy eyes are still closed; mute is God’s tongue, as silent as dreams. ”

“ Bowed in ITS night, in ITS night!
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ON A MARRIAGE I hear laughter and there is a feasting, and another marriage is made—
A conspiracy has been formed to accouch another being.
Thou child unborn that now resteth in eternal day, day that is neither light nor dark;
Child that art yet uncreate and unwhipped of Pain,
In laughter and in feasting they have conspired against thy blissful sleep
There in the Unconscious,
There where thou art lapped and laved in non-being.
Hast thou heard the rumors from the lust-plane,
The guilty murmurings from the priest that made two beings incorporate? ”

“ The strong shall be tricked out of their strength, I say, and knock at the doors of the weak for a dole of black bread;
The weak shall become strong, I say, and burrow their way into the thrones of the mighty. ”

“ My soul has fumed at the lips of Thy women.
(Pah! ’twas a fool’s trick to try to seduce me the HUNTER OF THEE.)
Effort, emotion, thought, dream, lust—what have these for me?
I came to judge of Thy works, not to dance to Thy pipings.
* * * * * * * * *
Thou canst not stanch the woe that is mine,
Thou canst not bribe to sleep my Everlasting Nay.
Godlike am I in Thy presence,
As weary as Change, and as young ”

“ Solving us, evoking us, tempting us out of the womb of the Naught into the awareness called life.
Does IT use the dregs of me or the best of me?
Eternity: is it inhabited?
The imminent cycles, the durations dead, the secrets in them: are they in ITS keeping?
Still, I listen, with my eye at the keyhole, and report;
For I know there are a Thwarter and one thwarted, a Nothing at war with a Something, a gad and a writhe—
One who returns everlastingly, but who is never repeated in Time.
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THE-CIRCLE-THAT-LOOKS-LIKE-A-LINE I am the Watcher, and me nothing eludes. ”

“ Linked to Prometheus, linked to great Lucifer, I’ll meet thee at the GREAT CROSSWAYS and heal thee forever of the disease of creating.
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MY SHADOWS Yonder lies my way.
Yea, I have taken the road, and in a sleep, in a cycle, I returned to the forks—
For all things are One, and beyond the One I cannot step.
The gad ever stings, and the Furies drive me forward—over suns, over flaming chaotic foreworlds, to the hilt of creation ”

“ Out of their crypts stalk my elder old selves, and whilst I stare with the impotent eye set in the head of the dead they drive in the little brass rivets of habit to the core of my being:
O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
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THE ALLEYS OF ELD Night and the Sea and the depths of Despair! ”

“ Tantara! Tantaro!
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THE TONGUELESS ONE There stands that Mute into whose ear the ages have whispered their secrets—
There stands that Mute with lusting eye and lusting ear who uttereth naught—
Mute of a myriad secrets who knoweth whither we wend;
Mute of the graven face and the alabaster hands—
There before me stands that Mute whose earthly name is Death—
That Mute into whose monstrous ear all things are whispered but who UTTERETH NAUGHT.
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THE SHRINE IN THE MIST I travel toward a Shrine that is set in a mist—long have I been on the way. ”

“ And Demiurge, muttering, retreating, advancing there in the Depths, is but the shadow of Me the Curious One.
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THE CYNIC OF NAZARETH The keenest Cynic of them all: Jesus Christ!
Hail! passionate rebel, great anarch of Nazareth, slitter of masks, announcer of Self procreate from a self—
Halloo! Halloo! from me to thee.
Sombre in hate, clear-eyed, dawn-browed, a mock in thy soul,
A mock at psalter and sceptre and a sneer for the sickly old God in the temples of stone—
Hail! Cynic and Mocker of Nazareth: greeting from me to thee!
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DE PROFUNDIS Night! ”