Beneath horizons red
with sorrowf’lly bleeding clouds,
a brooding stone ponders
empty fields.
Obelisk ancestor, wider than
nine man’s joined hands,
legend claims all skies lie balanced
on its unseen pinnacle,
quietly gutting cumuli
crawling by.
The stone strains, listening
for mouths long-lost
of breath to break apart,
whispering
Lowlnthorne,
Lowlnthorne,
Voices choked by dirt and
caught by roots,
only scampering black shells
privy to their canticles,
once moaned from grass-kissed knees,
songs swelling the night,
carried to heaven on smoking husks of calf,
driven to lusty adoration
by ground jasmine and scalding
witchhazel rev’rently splattered across
granite skin, sacred syllables
thick as summer milkhoney
slipping off lovers’ lips,
Lowlnthorne
Lowlnthorne,
Lowlnthor
Dark echoes
ne
beating down the mountains,
Low
out of the valleys and
lnthorne
up across the long mesas.
Curses spit through heavy scarves
– “Heathen! Pagan!” –
as
Lowl-
blades drop, cutting
nth-
faithful verse
orne Low-
into gurgled grunts,
lnth-
hutted fires casting
slender black
shafts from
orne
hearts,
Low
eyes,
ln
throats
thorne . . .
Silence.
An aching emptiness
squatting atop charred
roofs, dangling from
rigid limbs twisted
beyond pain.
Silence.
Skittering ‘cross the great cold
sides, through miniscule
fissures and stony pores,
winding its way skyward,
rising like heat, a flush
quick’ning to fever as
it climbs higher . . .
and higher . . .
Ground thunder rumbles west
as raiders retreat to their havens
beyond the rocky ranges.
Above, the stars wink once
and hide from the billowing brew
churning toward turned backs.
Whipping after the pillagers,
winds insistently clutch at cloaks and manes.
Night cracks in half with
throbbing hands of grief and spasm.
Electric veins split apart and
fling down upon the silencers
burning crimson tears.
Caws, cries, pleas
screamed too late
From keen mouths dissolving
to dripping caverns,
fingerless palms attempting
to shovel faces again into wholes,
man thigh and horse hide draining,
gathering in murky puddles until
only driftwood femurs
bobbing in a mud-red sea
remain.
But onward the storm rages,
tumbling off the plains and
surging into the lush glens,
looming over souls
ignorant of the raiders’ butchery.
Inconsolable and fury-blinded,
Deafened by its own shouting, unable
To hear the pleading name
Thrown before it
like trembling hands before a specter:
Lowlnthorne!
Lowlnthorne!
Lowln –
Rain spilling the innocent,
Their flesh flooding the streets,
Rage unquenched until the valleys
bloat into dark basins,
lifeless ripples bubbling in the
new-born lakes of acid.
And still the tears fall,
hysteria subsiding to melancholy,
depression lashing the land,
leaving year-wide scars like wrinkles
on the face of a childless father.
It stands yet, they whisper,
beyond blasted crag, boiling
loch, and barren steppe:
cursed god,
ever holding the skies,
perhaps waiting for
one who will walk the rain,
head bowed, voice transcending
sizzling stillness through
soaring chants,
a pilgrim’s craving betrothal,
Lowlnthorne,
Lowlnthorne,
my song, my soul,
to you forever,
Almighty Lowlnthorne
Samuel Minier 