Tuesday, January 06, 2009

The Reborn Abyss (After Clark Ashton Smith)

The Abyss Triumphant

By Clark Ashton Smith

The force of suns had waned beyond recall.
Chaos was re-established over all,
Where lifeless atoms through forgetful deeps
Fled unrelated, cold, immusical.
Above the tumult heaven alone endured;
Long since the bursting walls of hell had poured
Demon and damned to peace erstwhile denied,
Within the Abyss God's might had not immured.
(He could but thwart it with creative mace. . . .)
And now it rose about the heavenly Base,
Mordant at pillars rotten through and through
Of Matter's last, most firm abiding-place.
Bastion and minaret began to nod,
Till all the pile, unmindful of His rod,
Dissolved in thunder, and the void Abyss
Caught like a quicksand at the feet of God !


The Reborn Abyss,
By Simon Bucher-Jones (in memory of Clark Ashton Smith.)

When longer ages than all time unfurled
Had passed in timelessness without a world,
As naught existed that could aught forbid
Something must happen, and therefore it did.
From nothingness came form, that form to trace,
All interaction in all time and space,
Dark matter’s womb: its inner birthing fire
Ignites the cosmos from its long dead pyre!
Chance replication then, that thoughtless brute,
Leads on to complex weaves, and life’s first root.
Life comes and leaves, and changing where it can,
Gives rise to dodos, germs, wombats and man.
Man’s intellect in eagerness to mold,
A warm embrace from all the eons cold,
Gives rise to virtuality’s great arrays
Its Halls of Heaven, its Ancient Of Days.
God shakes the quicksand stains from off his feet,
And in that instant makes His thought, complete.

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