Alchemisland

Puzzling fogs descend from the fen

Symbols, omens and signs of the end

Grinding locks and cogs, ninth of the ten

Rancid meats hurled from Eastern skies, high tides

Tithes and tied bonds, tendering of debts, surrendering to death

Downward, downward tends the West, the fallen crest 

The millionth coin toss so it lands on its edge

Rains of remains, of sawed human veins, brain-coloured dawns

Human-faced serpents survived from antient time writhe in the Thames

Pallid piles of bones blended, truths as through the scryer’s lens

An answer to Rome will be born, no home spaces leant

A once-wonderful garden rended, blighted and untended

The final ending of the Creation sworn never to end

Smokelike clouds of stinging things no longer hidden, swirl above middens

Swim into vision, time of division when strictures are rigid

Holy places, high places, pillared temples are pillaged

Yearlong winters, frigid and gelid, crops on which survival is dependent

Are fed to a fire thousands-tended

Power from his blood rings, and from his seraph-forged pendant

No more bakers, no more millers, no more worship observed diligent

The indecent and the indigent are full of fiery spirit

While the pious and the homely snort at prelates in every village

Prayers, to choruses of snorting and derision

No more good news, no more holy missions

From the forges acrid emissions

For the act of breeding now requires permissions

Broken hearted, He of the fishes

All love owed to God pledged to the pillars

Innocents discover the fresh thrill of killing

The trill of ichor singing for spilling

The crunch around the village Tophet of now-cinder children

Opening up an evil building, now send your children

And they send them willingly

A timer filled with human eyes and odd slime slowly filling

A lake of blood into which a pelted fish descends

Hell’s denizens nest at its edge

Those of the air swap with those of the hedge

A gloam pledges to obscure the road to the henge

Where for hope or revenge his growing followers go, led

By dead idols, with fell graven heads

Hammers, hammers, smashing the legs 

Cities falling in tempest, like tents without pegs

Each day like the last, and never the next

For holding high with pride thy head

The crueller sentence of a broker next.