Carcosa Lost and Found

[smokingboot]

Shocked by a dream fragment in which I was swept away down a rocky river, like Weena in the Time Machine. I woke to the sound of my own voice screaming for help, only I wasn't really. In real life, it was an intake of breath and there I was, sitting up.

Carcosa remains an interest of mine. Ambrose Bierce began its story (https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/InhaCarc.shtml ) I knew it as the mysterious double-sunned city of the Yellow King, an unknowable bringer of malevolence and madness. There's more but once one starts on the Cthulhu Mythos one is almost certain to face the ultimate maddening horror; the purple prose of HP Lovecraft. I mention it now because a poem turned up this morning, possibly triggered by the nightmare. But first the classic depiction of the Carcosan vibe:


Cassilda's Song
Robert W. Chambers (1895)

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

Carcosa should never be fully explained. Still, here is my reply:

i could not help them then
those tired wretches dreaming of Carcosa
whose questions were all about
gold on the pavements,
and a world, however mad,
still better, still abundant

i could not say
beware this place
beware its tattered king
beware even of me
in all my kindness
all my talking kindness

of here
always of here
this my vein my home but
even a daughter stumbles
between shadows
born from double suns

above all beware promises
not for feared falsehood
But because here each
promise will be kept
to the last letter
the last broken letter

Beware the dreamer's song
of Lost Carcosa
The truth is
you will always find it
Wherever you thought
your steps were headed.

And because I like to remember them, here are my favourite inhabitants of Carcosa.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

That was a terrific few hours of television.

[smokingboot]

I still consider them unmatched.