1. INTRODUCTION

Valleys dim and void of glee, philtres of ill-tempered lore,
of absolution nevermore and satanic sorcery.
Acts of the unspeakable, haunted moons and tragedies,
death and ruin and debris.


2. IN RUE D'AUSEIL

Where in gruesome midnight hour
a violin wildly plays.
Sounds of evil, dreadful power
and of unheard grace.

In a dusty attic old in Rue d'Auseil
a pandemonium of notes, of dark dismay
resounds and opens wide the blackest night,
summoned a pathway to the void of Rue d'Auseil.


3. IN GARDENS RED, SATANICAL

O lovely demon, half-divine,
hemlock and hydromel and gall.
Honey and aconite and wine,
mingle to make that mouth of thine.

Thy mouth I love but most of all
it is thy tears that I desire.
Thy tears like fountain-drops that fall
in gardens red, satanical.


4. ONCE I WAS A FLOWER

Once I was a flower, fair and large in shape,
rainbow-winged the insects that from my chalice ate.
The rivers sang me hymns of beauty without end
and jewel-breasted birds were enticed by my scent.

Then they cut the thread of all my emerald splendour
and placed me in her hair to mingle with her grandeur.
That night she passed away, I know not how she died,
I had hoped to share with her eternal night.

But a strange wind entered,
spreading my leaves dead,
scattering them in ruin on
her cold death bed.

Yet my ghost remained like a faint perfume,
I do now haunt her grave, her silent chamber's
gloom to stay with her forever like a faint perfume.


5. THE PREMATURE BURIAL

Vague are the boundaries between life and death,
does your life end the moment you take your last breath?
Certain is the humid soil, the ultimateness of the urn,
does there end your mortality, who's the one to discern?

The ultimate woe, the true wretchedness,
oh the agony of a premature burial.
Lips of marble, gazeless eyed, cold as the grave,
a body that died.

Entombed into the darkness
and supposed to rot but
there is still warmth in this flesh
and the flow of this blood.

Shrieks of terror, sepulchral aghast,
ensnared in the sarcophagus
a never-ending nightmare to last.

Dark and cold, shrouds of mould,
deathless dread, envy the dead.
Lightless tomb, inverted womb,
fade to grey with tart bouquet.


6. MOTHER OF TOADS

Come hither, come hither,
why the haste little one?
She ogled the young man
soon to be gone.

With amphibian eyes and batrachian throat,
slimy and flabby, the mother of toads.

A witch of old times, enormous her size,
hideous her aspects, malicious her mind.
She handed a drink, the poisonous brew
this philtre of evil he drank from and lo!

His senses were altered and drawn he was soon
to her abomination and in the light of the moon
they mingled and wallowed like lovers till dawn,
then he was swallowed by the amphibian spawn.

Where he was gone
in Averoigne no one could tell,
only the toads croaked him a farewell.


7. THE GRAVEYARD BY NIGHT IN A THUNDERSTORM

(Instrumental)


8. THE UNDYING ONE

Thousands of years I have seen the moon
waxing and waning, vanish at days.
Weary and vexed I became all too soon
of men and his dull and trivial ways.

The earth is too small for such as I,
the oceans are still and grey yet the sky.

The heavens unrolled before my eyes,
just like a scroll I could read from the skies.
No secret was kept, no story untold,
knowledge I found in the deepest deeps.

At mountains of ice,
atop inky black seas,
no beauty unseen,
no dream left to dream.

Dark fire, grim moons,
cold forests, old doom.

For life and death have whispered secretly
to me in ancient runes of wisdom old.
And all that men has ever sought to learn,
no mystery left for me here to unfold.

Let me pass away like a faint smoke flying by,
immerse myself into voids where no dream has ever lived to die
Vanish like the crests of the waves amidst the endless sea
but I might live 'til the sun grew cold and ceased to be.


9. EVIL DREAMS RUN DEEP

In quest of a new home,
following god's road.
With wishes and with prayers,
with kettle and a goat.

The wind, the wind
howled in nightly gales.
The wood, the wood
haunted by weird tales.

So dark, so grim, so cold,
and the forest did lay in an unholy sleep.
And so vile a venom old,
evil dreams run deep, evil dreams run deep.

Enchanted thousandfold,
and the trees did weep, the trees did weep.
So dark, so grim, so cold,
the evil dreams run deep, so deep.

Between firs and moors,
the promised clearing lay.
But a darkness loomed
out there even at bright day.

The wind, the wind
whispered in turmoil.
The earth, the earth
foul with hexed soil.

So dark, so grim, so cold,
and the forest did lay in an unholy sleep.
And so vile a venom old,
evil dreams run deep, evil dreams run deep.

Enchanted thousandfold,
and the trees did weep, the trees did weep.
So dark, so grim, so cold,
the evil dreams run deep, so deep.


10. THE WITCH WITH EYES OF AMBER

I met a witch with amber eyes
who slowly sang a scarlet rune,
shifting to an icy laughter
like the laughter of the moon.

Red as a wanton's was her mouth
and fair the breast she bade me take.
With a word that clove and clung,
burning like a furnace-flake.

But from her bright and lifted bosom,
when I touched it with my hand,
came the many-needled coldness
of a glacier-taken land.

And lo, the witch with eyes of amber
vanished like a blown-out flame.
Leaving but the lichen-eaten stone
that wore a blotted name.


11. CANTICLE

In my heart a wizard book,
only love shall ever look.
Darling, when thou readest there,
wisely falter and forbear.

Ere thou turn'st the pages olden,
deeply writ and deeply folden.
Where the legends of lost moons
lie in chill unchanging runes.

Trifle not with charm or spell,
heptagram or pentacle.
Leave in silence, long unsaid,
all the words that wake the dead.

Darling, in my heart withholden,
letters rubrical and golden.
Tell the secret of our love and
the philtred spells thereof.

There, my memories of thee,
half of all the gramarie are a firm unfading lore:

Read but these and read no more!

Shall it profit thee to find
loves that went with snow and wind?
Leave in silence, long unsaid,
all the words that wake the dead.


12. TO DRINK FROM LETHE

In quest of her whom I had lost
I found a shore to rest at last.

And in this waters a shimmering,
phantasmal lights like echoes of the past.
I saw them drinking from the blackened flow,
with empty eyes they stared at me aghast.

Then I found the one
I had been longing for,
tgether we would drink
from waters of this shore.

And dreamed a dreamless
dream of nothingness abound.
As we forgot to be, oblivion we found,
we drank from Lethe to be reborn.

So trinke vom Fluß des Vergessens,
den dunklen Strömen des Lethe,
in dem die Sterne leuchtend schwimmen
in der ewigen Schönheit des Nichts.