Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city
alone

Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city
alone
Their shrines and palaces are not like ours
They do not tremble and rot
Eaten with time

Death has reared himself a throne

Lifted by forgotten winds
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie
A crown of stars

In a strange city
alone

A heaven God does not condemn
But the everlasting shadow
Makes mockery of it all

No holy rays come down
Lights from the lurid deep sea
stream up the turrets silently
Up thrones, up arbors
Of sculpted ivy and stone flowers
Up domes, up spires
Kingly halls all are melancholy shrines
The columns, frieze and entablature
Chokingly shockingly intertwined
The mast the viol and the vine
Twisted

There amid no earthly moans
Hell rises from a thousand thrones
Does reverence to death
And death does give his undivided time

There are open temples
and graves on a level with the waves
Death looms and looks
huge
gigantic
There is a ripple
now a wave
Towers thrown aside
Sinking in the dull tide
The waves glowing redder
The very hours losing their breath

All the cunning stars
watching fitfully over night after night of
matchless sleep
matched only with the whole of dream
The tell-tale beating of the heart
the breath
The desire, the pose
one poses upon the precipice
to fall to run to dive to tumble to fall down
down into the spiral down and then
One sees one's own death
one sees one committing murder or atrocious violent acts
and t