creepers slowly climbing the old house's side. like the gnarled fingers of an aged human, wrinkled and sly. The still Grecian countryside, pastoral to eternity, mists away through the long rows of leering statues, and the mask of a bull that we wear changes to an unearthly silence, a black terrifying faceless head that in its blindness nods back and forth, the creepers on the house sucking down to become hands, to beckon . . .
an angel rushes swiftly past in a shiver of air, the beat of her soft wings silver on the rising terror of muffling mist. The bass pad of heavy footfalls echoes under the low fog-curtain, and an immense beast is half-seen lumbering from the sun, its spines each one aglitter with light . . . .
the mist clears, though the landscape is dark, forbidding and cave-like. The sky is a vast cavernous roof, pools of air glimmering in the farther reaches of dimness.
a cherub darts down, fluttering, curly golden-haired, and then another, and more: thus, the whole world-cave is filled with cherubs, messengers wreathed in gold, in nothingness: the gold is black, black as night stealing up from a smoky pit which deeply belches darkness.
the house with creepers is now a palace bedecked by flowers picked from a dying garden, whose roots rise up in prayer, their brown and red fingers crooking the thick night, and flying in the dimmity.
dusk falls; so the statues awake and move in file towards the brink of the now wooded pit. The dense undergrowth conceals many lurking dangers which snap at the walking stones, who thereupon glide into the air, to move brokenly in an airy dance, chanting a weird and high-pitched song.
the half-light quickly passes to night, and in the dark the blind statues dance their ritual sacrifices.
the dawn breaks and the blue sun shines down upon its altar; the birds bloom into song and in chorus bless the awakening day.
a number of goddesses lie recumbent on a splendour of couches, satin green as the grass, yet silver as the sunbeams.
the blue light deepens to violet, from violet to crimson. The day becomes hot under the red sun, and a haze produced by the heat smears the scene.
a goat appears, skipping amongst the bushes. It has a human face and puffed cheeks: a ring of colourful flowers adorns his brassy hair.
a trumpet glints and blows. The palace appears, and its door is a bottomless pit into which the goat vanishes. The goddesses arise as one, and run with the sound of horses' hooves towards the palace, which assumes the shape of the gigantic beast, then all the goddesses float lifeless in the fiery air. They are blown about in the crimson wind, their hair flying out behind them, long loose locks.
they float high up in the sky, which has turned yellow, and become specks of black against a golden world.
the sun opens its folded arms, and envelopes all . . . . .