The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
At the end of time and space, An abyss, unmeasured, unplumbedThe haunt of a face !
She it is, she, that found me
In the morphia honeymoon;
With silk and steel she bound me, In her poisonous milk she drowned me, Even now her arms surround me, Stifling me into the swoon
That still-but oh, how rarely !
Comes at the thrust of the needle, Steadily stares and squarely,
Nor needs to fondle and wheedle Her slave agasp for a kiss,
Hers whose horror is his
That knows that viper womb,
Speckled and barred with black
On its rusty amber scales,
Is his tomb
The straining, groaning, rack
On which he wails-he wails !
Her cranial dome is vaulted,
Her mad Mongolian eyes
Aslant with the ecstasies
Of things immune, exalted
Far beyond stars and skies,
Slits of amber and jet
Her snout for the quarry set
Fleshy and heavy and gross,
Bestial, broken across,
And below it her mouth that drips Blood from the lips
That hide the fangs of a snake,
Drips on venomous udders
Mountainous flanks that fret,
And the spirit sickens and shudders At the hint of a worse thing yet.
Olya ! the golden bait
Barbed with infinite pain,
Fatal, fanatical mate
Of a poisoned body and brain ! Olya, the name that leers
Its lecherous longing and knavery, Whispers in crazing ears The secret spell of her slavery.
Horror indeed intense,
Seduction ever intenser,
Swinging the smoke of sense
From the bowl of a smouldering censer! Behind me, behind and above,
She stands, that mirror of love.
Her fingers are supple-jointed ;
Her nails are polished and pointed, And tipped with spurs of gold:
With them she rowels the brain.
Her lust is critical, cold ;
And her Chinese cheeks are pale, As she daintily picks, profane
With her octopus lips, and the teeth jagged and black beneath,
Pulp and blood from a nail.
One swift prick was enough
In days gone by to invoke her
She was incarnate love
In the hours when I first awoke her. Little by little I found
The truth of her, stripped of clothing, Bitter beyond all bound,
Leprous beyond all loathing.
Black, the plague of the pit,
Her pustules visibly fester,
Cancerous kisses that bit
As the asp caressed her.
Dragon of lure and dread, Tiger of fury and lust, The quick in chains to the dead, The slime alive in the dust, Brazen shame like a flame, An orgy of pregnant pollution With hate beyond aim or nameOrgasm, death, dissolution ! Know you now why her eyes So fearfully glaze, beholding Terrors and infamies Like filthy flowers unfolding ? Laughter widowed of ease, Agony barred from sadness, Death defeated of peace, Is she not madness ? She waits for me, lazily leering, As moon goes murdering moon; The moon of her triumph is nearing; She will have me wholly soon.
Who have missed the morphia craving, Cry scorn if I call you brothers, Curl lip at my maniac raving,
Fools, seven times beguiled,
You have not known her ? Well ! There was never a need she smiled To harry you into hell
Morphia is but one
Spark of its secular fire.
She is the single sun
Type of all desire !
All that you would, you are
And that is the crown of a craving.
You are slaves of the wormwood star. Analysed, reason is raving.
Feeling, examined, is Pain.
What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it ! Life is anguish, insane;
And death is-not a way out of it
" Olya," too, reminds me of myself. I have a morbid wish to be an impossible monster of cruelty and wickedness.
Lamus had told me that long ago, He said it was the phantasm which summed up my longing to - " revert to type." La mostalgie de la boue.
Cockie lost all his dignity. He pleaded for just one sniff. We weren't really very bad, but the description of the thirst in that horrible poem had made us feel thirsty.
" My dear man," said Lamus very brutally. " I'm not a dope peddler. You've come to the wrong shop."
Cockie's head was drooping, and his eyes were glassy. But the need of dope drove him desperately to try every dodge.
" Hang it all," he said with a little flash of spirit. You encouraged us to go on,"
" Certainly," admitted Lamus, " and now, I'm encouraging you to stop."
" I thought you believed in do what you like; you're always saying it."
" I beg your pardon," came the sharp retort. - " I never said anything of the kind. I said, 'Do what thou wilt,' and I say it again. But that's a horse of quite a different colour."
" But we need the stuff," pleaded Peter. " We've got to have it. Why did you induce us to take it ?"
"Why," he laughed subtly, "it's my will to want you to do your will."
" Yes, and I want the stuff."
" Acute psychologist as you are, Sir Peter, you have failed to grasp my meaning. I fear I express myself badly. "
Cockie was boiling inwardly, yet he was so weak and faint that he was like a lamb. I myself would have killed Lamus if I had had the means. I felt that he was deliberately torturing us for his own enjoyment.
"Oh, I see," said Cockie, " I forgot what you were. What's your figure ? "
The point blank insult did not even make him smile. He turned to the tall girl who was at the desk, correcting proofs.
" Note the characteristic reaction," he said to her, as if we had been a couple of rabbits that he was vivisecting. " They don't understand my point of view. They misquote my words, after hearing them every time we have met. They misinterpret four words of one syllable, 'Do what thou wilt.' Finally realising their lack of comprehension, they assume at once that I must be one of the filthiest scoundrels unhanged."
He turned back to Cockie with a little bow of apology.
" Do try to get some idea of what I'm saying," he said very earnestly.
I was bursting with hatred, brimming with suspicion, aghast with contempt. Yet he forced me to feel his sincerity. I crushed down the realisation with furious anger.
"I encourage you to take drugs," he went on, " exactly as I encourage you to fly. Drugs claim to be every man's master. "
'Is it such terrible odds
The heir of ages of wonder, The crown of earth for an hour, The master of