Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Shoggoth (poem 13)

I
Don’t.

II
But, of course, you must.
As we all must.
The Great Eye waits for each
In turn to meet its gaze.

III
The shoggoth whirled in the cosmic winds.
It was all.

IV
A man and a woman
Are none.
A man and a woman and a shoggoth
Are infinite.

V
I do not know what to prefer,
The beauty of chaos
Or the beauty of the Elder Things,
The tentacle suckling
Or just after.

VI
The shadow crosses the stars,
An indecipherable curse
In an ancient tongue: “Tekeli-li!”

VII
Oh men of Sarnath,
Why do you covet golden idols?
Green lights in the mists;
They come to reclaim what’s theirs

VIII
Dreadful, inescapable rhythms;
I know the shoggoth is involved.

IX
When the shoggoth leaves,
Its tentacles inscribe many circles

X
At the sight of ruins,
Impossible geometries
Wrought of ivory unknowably vast,
Even the creatures of Ib
Cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Celephais
In a dream.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook his own shadow
For a shoggoth.

XII
The chaos is crawling.
The shoggoth must be approaching.

XIII
It was evening for a thousand years.
It was raining
And it was going to rain.
The shoggoth sat
In a tangle of limbs.

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