Lament for Innsmouth

Here I stand beside the sea, and looking

out across the water wonder where they went.

Innsmouth stood here all those years ago,

With its murk and smell of fish and water.

Men would tremble as they passed for fear of

Horrors deep and ancient. Men whispered too

of the blending of blood, and the fearful changing,

Transforming, becoming something other

than human.

 

Deep Ones, where did you go? After they took

your children, after they burned your town?

Did you merely swim deeper, to the cities

of pale gold at the heart of the ocean?

Abandoning the pale, strange land-dwellers

who spurned your gifts, who could not lay aside

revulsion for the immortal promise

of that golden city, where you swim still?

  Or is there another town, another place

far from the civilizations of man

where some forgotten race of humans, more

or less, still hear the songs of Great Dagon

and Mother Hydra?

 

I pray that such a town might be, somewhere,

For I fear the strange things have all left us.

The Mi-Go have flown onward, on aethric

wings, for we answered only with gunshots

when they offered us wings to fly beyond.

Come back, Mi-Go! I will not fear the buzz

of your voices, or the strangness of your

metal jars. Gladly, would I ride in one

to fly ageless midst the spheres, and understand

what fungus grows in Yuggoth.

 

Is the human mind really so fragile

it should splinter at the very notion

of something greater than itself? Come back,

O Deep Ones. Your songs are so alien

yet they hold a beauty akin to love.