Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin
Invade our souls and rack our flesh; we feed
Our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed
Like vermin glutting on foul beggars' skin
Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, faint
We take a handsome price for our confession
Happy once more to wallow in transgression
Thinking vile tears will cleanse us of all taint
On evil's cushion poised, His Majesty
Satan Thrice-Great, lulls our charmed soul, until
He turns to vapor what was once our will
Rich ore, transmuted by his alchemy
He holds the strings that move us, limb by limb
We yield, enthralled, to things repugnant, base
Each day, towards Hell, with slow, unhurried pace
We sink, uncowed, through shadows, stinking, grim
Like some lewd rake with his old worn-out whore
Nibbling her suffering teats, we seize our sly
delight, that, like an orange—withered, dry—
We squeeze and press for juice that is no more
Our brains teem with a race of Fiends, who frolic
thick as a million gut-worms; with each breath
Our lungs drink deep, suck down a stream of Death—
Dim-lit—to low-moaned whimpers melancholic
If poison, fire, blade, rape do not succeed
In sewing on that dull embroidery
Of our pathetic lives their artistry
It's that our soul, alas, shrinks from the deed
And yet, among the beasts and creatures all—
Panther, snake, scorpion, jackal, ape, hound, hawk—
Monsters that crawl, and shriek, and grunt, and squawk
In our vice-filled menagerie's caterwaul
One worse is there, fit to heap scorn upon—
More ugly, rank! Though noiseless, calm and still
yet would he turn the earth to scraps and swill
swallow it whole in one great, gaping yawn
Ennui! That monster frail!—With eye wherein
A chance tear gleams, he dreams of gibbets, while
Smoking his hookah, with a dainty smile. . .
—You know him, reader,—hypocrite,—my twin
My youth was nothing but a black storm
Crossed now and then by brilliant suns
The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores
Nothing's left of the fruit my garden held once
I should employ the rake and the plow
Having reached the autumn of ideas
To restore this inundated ground
Where the deep grooves of water form tombs in the lees
And who knows if the new flowers you dreamed
Will find in a soil stripped and cleaned
The mystic nourishment that fortifies
—O Sorrow—O Sorrow—Time consumes Life
And the obscure enemy that gnaws at my heart
Uses the blood that I lose to play my part