Brothers, have you chanced to listen to the serpent-bird's black song?
She who spake with razored beak of the righting of a Wrong
which, by Logos, once forestalled the noiseless ringing of a gong
that now summons all the horrors we have kept from door so long?

Here they suckle at the edges, there they teeth upon the real,
as the sleepers now awoken genuflect to Think and Feel,
and the witches who were broken refix spokes upon the wheel
of a carriage proudly bearing what would make of us a meal.

If ignorance be innocence, let a man be more than meat.
Let him go into the dark without fear of what will greet
him, without open, watering eye and the death he now must cheat.
Let him cast away his terror ere the terrors come to eat.

I have listened, patient heeding, as I've curled my lip at plea
for the heavy lid to close and the clos-ed eye to See,
and they, calling without knowing all the things still yet to Be,
cover knowing 'neath the sheet of unstirring certainty.

Now we braver hide our purpose. Drag the quiet from their beds
under ill-lit midnight murmur and the quiet in their stead.
Spare no thought for fading brother 'midst the nodding of his head.
I am with you till the end that, embittered, lies ahead.

For in listening, I have heard them.
They have crawled within my ear.
They have tongued at trembling flesh.
They have supped upon my fear.
They have shattered all the locks and picked through what's left of here,
and the there they promise beckons like a coffin absent bier.

Can you sense them? How they whisper?
How they brandish tooth and claw?
I am holding back the nightmare that now scratches at the door.

I am risen.
I am sleepless as it creeps across the floor.

Should I die before I wake, we will speak of it no more.

Penned by my hand on the 17th of Miraman, in the year 1018 AF.