They didn't help — no, though their barbs were sharp,

ripping his lusting flesh, thorn after thorn.

His pregnant senses had begun to warp

and buckle under; prematurely born

screaming were crooked, cross-eyed, creeping, grim-

faced imps and flittering things he brought to birth.

They gathered eagerly, with fiendish mirth,

this brood, and made a plaything out of him.

Already though, his senses’ spawn had spawn,

because that pack was fecund in the night.

Still gaudier, more maculate, they'd grown

a hundred-fold, fouled-up, and full of spite.

His greedy hand grasped at a cup of blight

that from them all, his mind had somehow drawn.

Their shadows, like a pair of thighs, then opened on

him, warm and clinging, ready to excite.

And since he screamed out for the angel — screamed —

the angel came in all his glory: there

he was. And then he drove those demons

back inside that saint, for that was where

he'd wrestle them again, those devils he

had struggled with inside so many years,

and so distill, out of his roiling fears,

the god who for so long he could not see.

Der Alchimist

Seltsam verlächelnd schob der Laborant

den Kolben fort, der halbberuhigt rauchte.

Er wußte jetzt, was er noch brauchte,

damit der sehr erlauchte Gegenstand

da drin entstände. Zeiten brauchte er,

Jahrtausende für sich und diese Birne,

in der es brodelte; im Hirn Gestirne

und im Bewußtsein mindestens das Meer.

Das Ungeheuere, das er gewollt,

er ließ es los in dieser Nacht. Es kehrte

zurück zu Gott und in sein altes Maß;

er aber, lallend wie ein Trunken,

lag über dem Geheimfach und begehrte

den Brocken Gold, den er besaß.