I hate the moon - I am afraid of it - for when it shines on certain
scenes
familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old garden
where I wandered; the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas
of
foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as I walked by the
shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light,
as if those placid waters were drawn on in resistless currents to
strange oceans that are not in the world. Silent and sparkling, bright
and baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst
from the embowered banks white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in
the opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly into the stream, swirling
away horribly under the arched, carven bridge, and staring back with the
sinister resignation of calm, dead faces.
And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless
feet
and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of the dead
faces, I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by
day the walls were, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and
paths, flowers and
shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the yellow-litten
stream past
grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. And the lips of the
dead
lotos-faces whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my
steps till
the stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds
and
beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea.
Upon that sea the hateful moon shone, and over its unvocal waves weird
perfumes breeded. And as I saw therein the lotos-faces vanish, I longed
for nets that I might capture them and learn from them the secrets which
the moon had brought upon the night. But when that moon went over to the
west and the still tide ebbed from the sullen shore, I saw in that light
old spires that the waves almost uncovered, and white columns gay with
festoons of green seaweed. And knowing that to this sunken place all the
dead had come, I trembled and did not wish again to speak with the lotos-faces.
Yet when I saw afar out in the sea a black condor descend from the sky
to
seek rest on a vast reef, I would fain have questioned him, and asked
him of
those whom I had known when they were alive. This I would have asked him
had he not been so far away, but he was very far, and could not be seen
at all when he drew nigh that gigantic reef.
So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming
the
spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city. And as I
watched,
my nostrils tried to close against the perfume-conquering stench of the
world's
dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the flesh
of the
churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms to gnaw and glut upon.
Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but the puffy worms
of
the sea need no moon to feed by. And as I watched the ripples that told
of the
writhing of worms beneath, I felt a new chill from afar out whither the
condor
had flown, as if my flesh had caught a horror before my eyes had seen
it.
Nor had my flesh trembled without cause, for when I raised my eyes I saw
that the waters had ebbed very low, shewing much of the vast reef whose
rim I
had seen before. And when I saw that the reef was but the black basalt
crown of a shocking eikon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the dim
moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I
shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden face rise above the waters, and
lest the hidden eyes look at me after the slinking away of that leering
and treacherous yellow moon.
And to escape this relentless thing I plunged gladly and unhesitantly
into
the stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and sunken streets fat
sea-worms feast upon the world's dead.
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