Within a midnight storm, in which no star glimmers
Or moon glows, as lightning flashes, and thunder
Roars, a ghastly sight sloshes amidst a bog’s muck,
The air, thick with the stench of decay and damp earth.
Her hair is knotted, unctuous; her eyes, fiery
And mad; her flesh is pale, blue, and silver; her teeth
Are yellow daggers; her tongue, forked; her gaunt face,
A sullen skull whose grin belies her endless woe;
She is fully revealed, her terrifying
Form is completely exposed to nature. This is
Death’s Daughter: Fear, Destruction, and Loss’s Mother,
Harbinger of the Cosmos’ Annihilation.
In her right hand, this woman bears an ebon bow.
She randomly draws crooked arrows from her left
Hip and aimlessly fires them in all directions,
Acquiring nothing but striking all she can strike.
She screams in agony as she hits her fated
Targets, for all she works is empty and lifeless.
In her fruitless plight, she blindly grasps around her.
Anything her skeletal fingers latch on to,
She drags to her gaping maw, devouring with
A sickening crunch, ripping flesh and bone with her
Bladed teeth, splintering all into tiny fragments.
Yet, as her unfortunate victims travel down
Her gullet, she feels no satisfaction; she turns
Towards her next meal, hoping to alleviate her
Unending hunger; her abyssal existence.
As she starves for satisfaction, she self-reflects.
She focuses on every aspect of her being:
Every sensation, feeling, and thought.
She is drawn to herself, makes plighted monuments
To her attachments; idols of all she has.
Yet she sacrifices nothing for her dead works.
Her icy heart is silent for her stone children;
she fashions them to mirror her pain; to see
The great anguish she cannot face within herself.
Her soul cannot grasp that which, with a soft caress,
May melt into nothing through Compassion’s warm flame.
Nor does reason compel her merciless actions.
Animated by primordial emotion,
She tears up the earth from beneath her, drives water
In all directions from her, burns the world ‘round her,
And stills the Air’s spirit as she writhes in despair.
She reshapes creation with each primeval lurch,
The ground splits open and spews molten rivers,
Trees twist, splinter, and groan under unseen forces,
Leaving behind a hollow world; a desolate
Wasteland where nothing stirs but the soft wind’s silence.
Her abominable and confounded kingdom
Reflects the dismayed crown within her ashen heart.
And without clear sight, she cannot match like to like.
Her scale causes the celestial heavens to fall,
For her judgment is founded upon her vile will.
The heavens descend on the earth and pass judgment
For the anarchic disarray she delights in.
The cosmic storm ignites the earth. Flames blazing,
The seas seethe, foam, burst, and bubble as they stew,
While deserts turn into oceans of molten glass,
Gleaming and perilous under the dying sky.
And while the world is engulfed through Heaven’s decree,
She dissects and disassembles the Word’s concord,
Breaking each aspect of creation apart ‘til
Nothing remains but atoms, distinguished by an
Unbridgeable and incommunicable space.
The incoherent forms Death’s Daughter isolate
Create egotistic kingdoms; singularities
Wrought with dust, mist, and crystal, eddying inward.
And as a black hole swallows light and matter whole,
These domains implode; their vanity a crushing
Force, spiraling inward, consumed by their own greed.
Their grotesque monuments to themselves fall to bits
And, like a boulder shattering a man’s soft skull,
They crush their creators with an unstoppable,
Incalculable force.
Their shrill screams echo without end through the void.
Death’s Daughter sits, as if at the Universe’s
Core, gazing on the turmoil she wickedly works,
Gleefully laughing like an ass as the Cosmos
Appears to descend into utter nothingness.
Then she hears a profound clarion horn across the
Infinite space before her. A blindingly bright
Light cast its immense illumination across
Her sorrowful vacuum. And from the light’s birthplace
strides a lady completely shrouded in white cloth.
Peace and serenity following her nurturing
Form, as the agonized multitudes quiet.
Death’s inferno burns out; the winds stand serenely;
The Cosmic Ocean stills its tumult; and the earth
Finds stability in the White Lady’s presence.
Unveiling her face, she reveals a visage
No language can capture, so immense in its beauty.
Her sublime face smiles, and she speaks with clarity.
“Death’s Daughter, your work is perfect; time is undone;
Space is space-less; the world is destroyed; and all is one.
Now comes the time of my son.” Her chest glows and she
Reveals a man, who bounds out into death’s night on
A diamond steed with a radiant sword in his
Right hand. He heroically gallops toward his goal;
Death’s Daughter screams terribly, reeling for her bow
to cut down the Son of Light, yet before she can
Strike him, he meets his target and beheads the Queen
Of Anarchy. Her head tumbles from her neck;
Her ruby blood engulfs the chasm before her;
And her body falls without end into the void.
Then the snow-white woman softly speaks: “Order is
Eternal; its source fixed, for it emanates from
The Good; Creation’s Heart and Father; Love’s Husband;
My Son’s source; your doom and demises’ foreteller.
The world is built upon his unseen foundation;
He generates and is bound to all; even you,
Death’s Daughter, whose self-hatred and pride appeared to
Destroy the whole of life to spite Him and his works.
Yet your wicked deeds only serve him in the end,
For He is the prime Creator and Destroyer;
The Beginning and End of Existence; the Lord
Of Being; King forever more, without end.”
The Son of Light then landed upon the massive
Body of Death’s Daughter, which stretches out as it
Falls, and planted himself upon her broken flesh.
Instantaneously, he grounds himself within
Her; roots himself to her craggy sinews and bones.
And from him springs a mighty tree, emanating
A blinding light from which Good Life emerges once more.
Thus, Death’s Daughter’s dance ends, and Creation begins.
