The second poem is an experiment. I took a very early draft (2012)of a previous poem I'd written, "Despair", then inverted it -- literally turned it upside-down, with the last line now the first line, etc. -- and lightly revised it until it started to made some sort of sense, then reorganized it to make more sense, then revised it again. It can also be compared to the most recent draft (2013) of "Despair", which I didn't look at until I had finished "Dread" (it is currently still the stronger poem). It's interesting to see the elements that have endured in both forks of the drafting.
Podunk Hollow Spaceport
Many rivers and streams run through here,
the West, the Taughannock, the Quahoag, the Milky Way,
and out on Vinton's Pond the starfish gleam
near where the High Rocks rise to sky sublime.
Out near Holley they speak Italian and Rigellian.
The rockets began sometime ago,
linking planet to planet and star to star.
The whizbangs and gizmos are for sale at the corner store.
But still the quiet reigns, the unanxious calm,
and little things done well, the boring way.
The galaxy is vast beyond imagination,
the future is greater than the realm of dreams,
even here, and perhaps especially here;
but in every future on every star
the simple places are simple still.
Dread
I crossed a glassy sea of illusions;
my mind's boat now drifts
on shadowed seashore.
Darkness swirls in the enveloping mist,
in the clouds, crying out for judgment day.
From the darkest shadows of dreams,
a web of lightless thread,
dark and ungleaming, holds all.
But I followed a thread astray
and now see the terror of divine judgment.
Beneath the earth, like a mighty image,
in iron chains water-rusting
until they crack, twist, break,
is the darkest god on a rocky isle.
Gloomy, in iron chains,
for long ages he sat,
and from him came darkness,
and the darkness blinded the light.
The shadow of darkness sits in chains,
a mountain peak rising up from a mighty cliff.
In the deep silence, stars are hidden.
Water falls through cavern stones,
dripping and dripping on holy chains,
turning god-iron into red rust;
dark shadow waits enmeshed
in rotting chains
until the chains are no more,
until the shell of the earth is broken,
until the darkness of the earth knows
the fire and light of the sun
and hungers for it.
The darkest darkness is star-exclusive night,
and from it I trembled and fled;
but I knew the future
and saw the end too clearly.
Once long ago that gigantic figure,
a lifeless light,
beyond the reach of the stars,
surrounded by chains,
was dragged before the ancient court,
and knelt.
His crown was broken,
the war over.
He was the darkest god,
the darkness-bringer,
the fear of the night,
but even divine wars subside,
even gods suffer heavy defeat.
What mortal thought can imagine
the fierce convulsions of warring gods?
The wind tore rock from its roots,
monsters fought in the endless depths.
Mountains splashed like stones in the sea,
the sea devoured longstanding lands.
Yea, it is said that a war between the gods
shook the world in ancient times.
Yea, it is said that it will begin again.
The darkness one day will reappear
and final judgment come.
