Woman of Night!
your demon screech-owl shudders
on its Lilith-flight
across the blackened hells
where hideous hissings spout
from the mouths of Hecate’s shells
Your leprous toads
leap evilly in echoing pools
where lightless moons
drown their blood-drained ghostliness
and noxious ghuls
at cross-roads
cast their runes
The smooth white alabaster
of your skin is phosphorescent
with a million sins that lust
behind your eyes
charging their limpid light
with tawny lies that turn
my soul to dust
Yet the fascination
of your serpent mouth
sucks in the semen of the sun
that dies with a scarlet face
Your spider’s web spans space
laces that to this
across the black abyss
its glittering ropes
binding the pylon of my erect and sentient
sentinel now mummified
beneath the silky kiss of your obscene caress
Black as ice embalmed
piercing the colder dream
of white
I cling to you like bat to barn-loft beam
And slake my thirst upside down
At the climax of your evil rite
O Queen of Night!
From “Convolvulus and other poems”
Kenneth Grant
