A Flower Grows in Hell

Me and the boys went the other night. It was raining. We caught the city bus and rode all the way through Eastbridge Tunnel. Sad Mary was already on top; she gave me one of her dead lilies.

I love the tunnel – so dark, so gloomy. There are no eyes in its darkness; I can relax there. Only there does the voice leave me alone.

I got hung up for a bit watching this Skinner kid carefully eat a sticky bun he'd been given. He was eating it so slowly, so passionately that I could almost taste it myself. I touched him and got that lightheaded feeling I always do when I touch kids. It didn't take long before I found what I was looking for. The taste of that bun flowed across my tongue. The sugar, the pecans, the cinnamon: pure delight. I got a rush from it, sitting there, my arm snaking through the window of the bus, my hand right inside the kid's head. Mary had to shake a rush off me; otherwise I probably would've fallen of the bus.

---
"Wraith: The Storytelling Game of Death and Damnation", promotional leaflet, Dragon Magazine 2007, July 1994

Spokojna wyspa ignorancji

Wydaje mi się, że największym dobrodziejstwem na tym świecie jest fakt, że umysł ludzki nie jest w stanie zrozumieć sensu naszego istnienia. Żyjemy na spokojnej wyspie ignorancji, pośród czarnych mórz nieskończoności i wcale nie jest powiedziane, ze w swej podróży zawędrujemy daleko. Nauki - a każda z nich dąży we własnym kierunku - nie wyrządziły nam jak dotąd większej szkody; jednakże pewnego dnia, gdy połączymy rozproszoną wiedzę, otworzą się przed nami tak przerażające perspektywy rzeczywistości, a równocześnie naszej strasznej sytuacji, że albo oszalejemy z powodu tego odkrycia, albo uciekniemy od tego śmiercionośnego światła, przenosząc się w spokój i bezpieczeństwo nowego mrocznego wieku.

---
Opowiadanie "Zew Cthulhu" w zbiorze "Kolor z przestworzy" (Wydawnictwo SR), H.P. Lovecraft, s. 5

The Grave

While some affect the sun, and some the shade.
Some flee the city, some the hermitage;
Their aims as various, as the roads they take
In journeying thro' life; -- the task be mine,
To paint the gloomy horrors of the tomb;
Th' appointed place of rendezvous, where all
These travellers meet.

---
"The Grave", Robert Blair (1699-1746), fragment

Prospice

Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form;
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And made me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave.
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain.
Then a light, then thy breat,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!

"Prospice" Robert Browning