Creation was a crystal sphere
In my design. Completely clear
To light that witnessed every space.
Moved planets in their paceless paths,
Bred ferns that flowed with scaled tongues
And guided hearts. These laws defined
The workings of each worldly part
In my unending cosmic play.

So this design I split to seven,
And every part to seven more,
And seven parts for each part’s part,
And so on, until every piece
Contained within its holy bounds
A granule of the firmament.

This twisting tree of my design
Thus made, creation at its crown,
Its building I left unto my
Celestial bureaucracy,
My shining pyramid of song.
Angel layered upon angel,
A machined choir of of sole intent
To compass one small ordered ball
From the formlessness of null.

The base of this incarnating
Mirror of design’s branching root
Was where the lowest angels sang
The simplest of melodies.
A mere three thousand harmonies
Emerging from a single throat,
That sculpted but one voidal grain.
Above, these fibrous songs were blent
To fuller, more elaborate yarns
By archangels of golder garb
That glistered in the telling.
And so through rulers, powers and thrones,
Was each strand mixed to fuller forms,
Until the complete, complex world
Unfolded from a single sound.

And such a sound! That sprang to all
The corners of that holy ball.
Made ring with resonating power
The dark vacuum, and so inspired
By this clanging call to being
The void rang back in sympathy.
Vibrations! Ah, such simple stuff
That makes a world. But heed the proof:
Sweet crystal bloomed in shadow’s court,
And so I had my realm to rule.

Yet something shrank from my embrace,
Refusing its benevolence.
A splinter of obsidian
Encased within the glassy mass
That I had not foreseen. I sought
Its source within creation’s song.
Hear: there and everywhere there ran
A soft, enfolding fugal line,
Not wholly foul, but alien,
That lulled some simple, apish mind
From will to won’t, from must to might.

So which warped tool extemporised
And led my perfect plans astray?
Dissecting springs and gilded gears,
I sundered incarnation’s forge,
And found within a coggy nook
The defective automaton.

But… was it so? For only will
Sets seed to will (myself aside).
For midnight’s flame to burn within
The borders of my noontime realm,
There must have been an unseen fire
That smouldered in the forge’s dark,
Infecting with the sable spark.
And yet this also could not be.
This husk that squirmed within my grasp
Held no such flame; its breath blew cold.

How cruel the ties of logic bind.
Even I cannot forestall
The grim progress of reason’s march.
All aspects of my sensate powers
I brought against this mystery,
And still it held. And so a light
Was shone upon my power’s end,
Where all had once seemed limitless.

Within the stillness of this shame,
A single future called to me:
Snuff out dark light. Conceal that edge.
Return to arch totality.
I acted fast. Exiled the pen
That wrote within my blessed book.
But ink had dripped from out its nib,
Had mixed its darkness with my light.
A sea of light tinged faintest black,
But black the same. And with what might
Could I unmix that diffuse sin?
None I possessed. With direful power
I tore the world from rim to rim,
Sieved land and ocean, filtered thought,
Distilled spirit from the body.
All corrupted. None were saved.

For all my efforts only served
To mix that darkness deeper in.
To grind it into each thing’s essence,
And make all one with that not me,
‘Til each mind curdled from my sight,
And flaws cracked through every atom.
Made some, convulsed by creeping death,
Throw up hard light, or spew forth poison.

Decay, decay, decay. Disgust
Rippled through my being. Foulness
Sucked at every pore. Each stinking pit
Where once glass stood, where I had made
That glass that stood, now lay opaque,
Enshrouded by its own designs.

The world was mine in my design,
And now it was its own.
No more to do. My will drew back.
Back to that more endless void.
Countless constellations all around
Resounding with Hosannas;
Among all these one star burnt black.
Eclipsed with ease by whiter worlds,
But still it burnt within my mind,
That first, worst stain of marred perfection.

So I, the lord of infinite space,
Bounded by depthless disgrace,
Sat in judgement of my work.
Its fault was clear. But what just fate
Could I apply in remedy?
With half a thought I could have made
All land to sink beneath the waves,
Or cleaned all life with fire or ice,
And fixed my truth. A simpler task
To roll into the valley of death
Than up its sides, to order’s peak.

Destruction, though, could never cleanse
The abyss that this treason tore
Beneath the ocean that is called
My memory. A flame in dreams
Cannot be quenched by waking water.
Dark fire, my efforts clearly wrote
Would also never turn to white
By only my hand’s outer powers.
A single path seemed open still,
One beyond all my influence:
That this black world would cleanse itself.
Choose against choice. Accept my sight.
Return once more to crystal glass.

If some time hence I turn my gaze
To look upon my broken work
And find it once more clear to me,
How precious will its breaking seem!
A rock unweighed cannot be heavy,
A sea unseen cannot be wide,
So my creation’s redeemed soul
Will prove my edge is not yet found.
Much greater must my power be
Than I had ever thought before,
If even without conscious will
The seed to undo evil’s sway
Was planted in the world’s design
Before it formed.


        …But should this fail,
Just what hard beast will ooze from out
The clouded rind of that dark egg
To seek a mantle more divine
And challenge its creator?

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