Four More Gothic Poems
Rhys Hughes
My mission to create a suite of exactly 77 Gothic poems continues, although it has slowed down recently. One way I can boost this project is to set off on a three-day hike around the Gower Peninsula, a geographical feature of great beauty near where I am currently staying, with special attention paid to the supposedly haunted parts of that landmass. I intend to bivouac among the ruins of cursed castles, in woods festooned with ghostly legends, among the oddly enigmatic dunes of the coast. My imagination will be expanded in a spectral direction during this jaunt, and I feel certain that poems directly or indirectly inspired by my experiences will result. In the meantime, here are four more poems, romantic in the old sense of the word, creepy, blasted and dramatic…
Lost Underground
The river seemed calm
when they began
to pole themselves downstream
on the rotting raft.
From fallen trees, cankerous,
unglamorous,
the improvised vessel
had been crafted.
And languorous the waters
they would navigate
to escape destruction
on the unwise trail: they had failed
to cross the peaks.
This expedition
of countless weeks
to the imagined treasures
that gleam in wait
beyond the sheer sentinels of stone
must be curtailed:
they ought to return home.
Four exhausted explorers
who once abhorred
the mundane comforts of an easy life,
but now abhor even more
the unjustified strife of heroic ordeals.
One by one
in a land with no sun
they are slowly consumed by fever,
and one by one,
as the days race on,
the incline of the river grows steeper
and steeper and steeper,
as the opaque tears
of malign mirth on the terrible face
of the evil god
responsible for your next rebirth
as worm or spider,
accelerate, propelled by demonic hate.
One explorer remains:
his brain is burning but he is alive.
The raft knocks
against the sides of the ravine.
His fever-dreams
consume themselves: he is strong.
And the
greatest wrong
is that he will never belong to his
own destruction.
Ahead, a monumental construction:
a portal into the cliff,
the vestibule of the underworld,
Pluto’s dwelling place,
and the crumbling raft rushes inside
as if to vainly hide
from the dying glimmers of hope
outside: he is doomed.
Deep under the earth,
among the tectonic shiftings,
swirled in a darkness
occasionally pierced by shafts
of light: phosphorescent snakes
snipped from Medusa’s head
by the blades of fate,
he may continue his explorations.
There are nations underground.
Lost, he will be found
by creatures beyond understanding
when he huddles
on the ultimate floating plank
of the rotting raft
that has almost entirely sunk.
There is sufficient space:
there are uncountable rooms.
There is a mutated grace:
an insignificance that looms.
_____________________
Arabella
Arabella,
come to me,
from the castle balcony.
On this balmy moonlit night
the rocks below
seem softer.
Buttered with beams,
cushioned by dreams,
the fall will
not hurt you at all.
No need for any apology.
Arabella,
come to me:
I am the river that leads
to the sea.
My bed of stones
should rest me alone
no longer.
Join me in my geology
and prosper
without life
a thousand times longer
than otherwise.
_____________________
The Bell
When the bell was damaged
in a thunderstorm
the inhabitants of the town
knew what to do
to repair it well: they knew
what to do to make
a new hell
for the outsider
with all his dangerous ideas.
He came to live among them
the previous year
and they tolerated his ways
for an eternity
that was in fact three months:
and for the next six
they grew sick
with cold tensions
and loathsome apprehensions.
In order to cancel his intrusion,
they chose a day
to fix the bell: dragged him
from his bed,
bound his limbs, strung him up:
a substitute clapper,
not quite dead,
inverted he swings,
sounding the hours with his head.
_____________________
In the Mist
In the mist
I am kissed by forces unseen.
In your dreams
I am demeaned
by intangible beings unclean.
And I wonder
how a vaporous ghost
can be so grimy.
Slimy the mist,
wistfully blessed by curses,
slicks the wheels
of passing hearses
like the blood of rotting eels.
And I ask myself
why the dead in health
are so untimely.
Hungry the mist,
a billowing foam roaming
our empty streets,
washing our feet
in evaporated poison
and moistening our thin lips.
And I ask myself
what happens when ghosts
are torn limb
from ectoplasmic limb.
Do their entrails
become synonyms for mist?
Tendrils of cold steam
rid themselves
of any need to redeem us.
We accept the facts:
this city, always uncrowded,
shall forever
be shrouded
by the churned
and clotted screams
of our own overflowed souls.
_____________________
