Netherworld

I

The lake was grey and broad as a city

ringed by pines along its sandy banks,

a sharp spruce scent cutting the air

above the gritty grime of peach-pale sand.

The sky was silver, I recall

in as much as sky could be seen

for all about, in thick, smoky veils

clammy mist, moist and heavy

enveloped the land.

Shreds wove between trees as skillfully

as the thread at Penelope’s loom

and the lake’s murky waters were such as molten steel

and no mortal eyes could pierce the dank depths.

Smooth as ice is seemed to me

as I waited in the grey woolen dress

girded with gold, my hair unbounded and combed to shine.

The rough fabric made me writhe now and again

but as I watched, eyes aching with humidity

I heard a clarion bell strike through the fog,

six silver peals, echoing hauntingly.

Night was falling, like velvet drapes,

but a yellow sphere bobbed somewhere

over the pale plain of the water’s still surface

growing ever nearer, with the tide of my apprehension.

Ripples shuddered against the shore

and a chill rain had begun to fall

as darkness encroached

with all the rapidity of that spectral sphere.

From that sheer fog a boat was defined,

forged of polished ash, sleek, dark, and golden,

and in the boat, a man—a gentleman,

dressed in suit and jacket, boot and scarf

with hair backswept like a Byzantine saint

and a face broad, kind, and cultured.

The boat lurched in contact upon the shore

crushing back grit and sand;

a cane staked the boat to earth

and, from beneath a heavy cloak of black,

the man’s hand emerged to retrieve his hood

to gaze at me expectantly, as if I had been expecting him.

“Little poetess,” he murmured, watching me pull back from him

in nervous fear, arms wrapped around my soaking dress

and trills of breathy steam whispered into the air,

“Surely you do not retreat in terror?” he asked, eyes hurt.

“Surely you realize this place to which you have fled,

tearing away from house and home in great distress?

Did you not call out for the astral aid of a Parent?

I am sent to you, one Parent said you honored

Or at are least taken by,

in hope that you would trust to follow.”

There was no tension to upset us,

no sinister airs or hidden threats,

and yet an eerie superstition seemed to hold me.

“You are the poet of my childhood lore,” I consented,

words slow and chosen with caution,

shifting nervously from foot to foot in the rain-weeping frock

to the squelch of saturated sand beneath my bare toes,

“the maker of daydreams—those being a happy prince and a selfless nightingale

a cruel immortal (one Dorian Grey), a sweet swallow, a secretless sphinx

Lady Windermere, Algernon, Cecily, Jack

Gwendolen, sorrowful Sibyl, imaginativeEarnest,

a ballad of a reading gaol, Salome’s story

an ugly dwarf, his spoiled princess—

is surely one I honor and trust

keeper of wit and love’s defiance of law’s bounds.

But why arrive on this bleak, unhappy eve?

Why come from heaven to attend one squalling child,

for surely I am not the first to reach and cry out

for a steadying hand from beyond?”

With heavy sigh and his own fingers extended

he pulled me up into the boat, draping me in an extra cloak,

one the deep lavender and violet of humanity.

“No heaven do I come from, little sphinx,” he answered,

and with a wooden staff guided us into the mist

by the mellow, yellow light of the wrought-iron lamp on the prow,

“but a common place, one of low standards, one might say.

I was asked by Parental Deity to bring you into the depth

of the rank apartment I am bound to,

for you, at the gall and fury of your friends,

despite your bold demeanor and defiant humor

‘have within thee a thing called conscience,’

and a more poignant and wounded one that has not been

in a long and painful age.”

Adronican quotation makes my eyes meet his sharply,

but he continues without note of my discomfort,

ignoring, not ignorant, saying a thing he was told to say.

“Though your companions, as well as Divine Parent

think it folly and danger,

you persist that every story has a splayed array of sides

and wait patiently for them to be revealed,

or seek them on your own with head high and heart open.

Though you joke of hatred and scorn and hell

you believed in none until now at my speaking,

and have no great grudge held on any entity in or out of existence.

By this foolish, fallen purity of compassion

that makes you go in secret from your home

to offer your aid to orders of sympathy

while telling your friends of shops and galas

with robust nature to hide insecurity,

avoiding incurring their disapproval at your pious pity,

the Divine Parent heard your call,

one unhindered by shallow mortal vengeance—

that would have, leaden, sunk the prayer mid-flight—

that raced to reach astral ears.”

In painful humility that my loves call spinelessness, I answered,

stumbling, upset and unnerved by harsh praise

almost angry at its high-handed arrogance

but my Guide but smiled and waved a dismissive hand.

“Take it up with Divine Parent,” he replied mildly, gentle,

“The One Who wrought you for that purpose and regretted it.”

Across the dull crystal lake we went,

where night had fallen with pinprick stars

and the moonlit mist glowed with an eerie gemstone pallor,

to the center of the lake where we had striven.

My Guide gritted his teeth and pulled up his hood,

for the moment our light touched the central waters

a great whirlpool stirred beneath us.

Like Charibdis’s mouth it opened,

the swirling water of its wet, gaping maw

and the waterfall rush of its swallow

like a monstrous howl that strung out into the terrified night,

frozen at its unearthly cry in fear.

My Guide lurched and ducked in the boat

pinning us safely down as the roiling waters sucked us in

with a great juicy slurp

until we fell through its greasy gullet,

down into the Os Infernum!

Down into the Mouth of Hell!

Our meager craft plunging, down, down, down

into the unseen black pit below,

my screams of shrill terror muffled in my Guide’s breast.