Head and Heel

You curl and slink
Offering the poison all must one day drink.
Multi-venomed Ourobouros,
All-encircling wall of fear!
We feel your venom, feel your sting!
For every night we close our eyes.
Once, you were only sleep,
Somnus was your name,
Until that malic sin was tasted
In the umbrage of that Tree
And the One who planted it.
Then the veil was rent asunder
From top to bottom
And we saw that slumber was only the tip
Of that rattling, serpent
Whose blood is colder than an epitaph.
Your manifold names revealed,
Your true form unleashed.
Who is immune to your inevitable virus
Of which we are all carriers and victims?
We flee from thee still...
Lord Thanatos, Lady Kali,
You, Viper of the Final Night.
And to those fools for whom you are invisible,
Who see no stings
And grant you no victories:
I beg them to circumspection.
I beg them to gaze long
At the cemetaried sepulchres of the ages
Which make no effort to cloak
The evidence of your trampled vintage.
And as for victory -- it is assured,
As every day is a pyrrhic war
Under the pervasive Damoclean threat
Of your terrible, swift sword.
This cold-blooded truth slithers on...
Constricting, binding, engorging, biting
Leaving us with nothing
But carcass.