" .......when an aerie spirit accosted me ......"

i am in love with englands blue skies and her fair children

i ramble her meadows and woods alone or attended by distant angels

my ash staff charged by my art coiled about its latent power like an adder

with certain lenses the glimpses tomorrow has ill afforded

yes i am in communication with them

in trance the universe drains into a hole in my astral skull

i am thrown to this world like a thief in eden

i walk the old paths i speak the old tongues

i sing life or death though none may hear these arcane theses

i move through hells walls a frozen shadow retaining all memory

my eyes have seen the naked kali black and winged

my hands have touched the ice that fire cannot endure

my ears have heard the power love will never abide

but soft and softer still

i made terrible mistakes i was burned within my skin

i trusted men with my head but my heart said no it should not be

falling in an out of favour

with a world maddened as it moves away from the christ

oh virgin monarch you bitter withered hag-queen of nescience

your advisors appear from orange and flanders and vanish on scaffolds and racks

the treachery of some courtesan who once fucked some duke

the unction of some priest buggered before the cross

the hypocrisy of fortune

the idiot crowd existing in the common stupor

the morbid thrill of a shark moving through the court

i leave her shores from expediency no longer the glamoured novice

of necessity my exile in black papered mirrors that reflect the thoughts of the dead

kelley and his gift twinned with insatiable wish

he was right about some things though i cannot be that mistaken

he knew the true name of gold and also its subtle sound

he knew the taste of failure manifested in a sour phlegm

he fashioned the stains of seraphim into a seeming spell

and i dreaming fell under its night

and it fell upon me

and so i bid my albion farewell on samhain eve

and i walk the forests of some illyria disconsolate

and invisible