“As I wandered in the northwest
counties
Atop and down hills shining with white
stone
I saw a cave open down beneath the hills
No more than one foot high and one wide
And felt an ice wind as I walked alone
Hearing faint hissing become
growls.
As dust rose up from before
that cave
I began to run, not looking
back
But hearing angry grunts
and howls.
Soft and quiet as currents
in the deep sea
But the scurry of many
running feet
Told me something was close
behind
On my left, on my right,
then beside me.
Like a nail being driven into my
feet,
And then on my left, and again
on my right,
And saw black blades lifted high
That were knives stabbing each
boot.
And could at last see what cut
me:
No more than 3 feet tall they slashed
with knives
Crafted from bits of metal dark
as history
And black as their nonhuman savagery.
As I lay looking up at the
darkening sky
Were scored with scars of an
old age
Deeper than anything human,
than my wounds.
Grim they were, but human enough
to horrify.”
And carved his body deeply
riven as the Earth
To carry in pieces back to
their Wee Cave
Where they had long fed on
lone walkers
And fed to their horrible
babes from birth
And looked no younger than
the old
And carried the same knives
in their fists
That their sires carried
of black metal
Forged in Earth’s depths
of unhuman cold
Is the same as the The
Cold Void of space.
So when you cavers think
to explore
Aside from your pack,
on your own, know
A Wee Cave may be beside
you, its ancient race
Ready to eat and hunt,
and hunt and eat,
And even now may be
close to your feet.
As you push through the tightest squeezes,
Ceilings only a few inches above your
head,
Cave walls thirty, forty feet either
side of you,
You feel that you’re being watched.
You are. You think that almost inaudible
Growling and hissing is only the wind.
You’re wrong. Something watches
you
And wonders how difficult it would be
To take you. Held in their small hands
Gnarled as the turn of the centuries
They’d hold knives of black metal
Forged miles below…
They
take few of us
And don’t feed often even on those
Who stray close to their caves.
Perhaps they’re hungry today for food
From the world above, perhaps they’re content
To only watch us until next time.
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“We hunted them for sport, for
fun,
So they crawled deeper into their caves
Until finally one morning none of them
Remained where our spears could gig them.
Far
down they went, miles deep
Until they found peace from
our hunting.
So we mostly forgot about them
And they became legends and
myths.
But
after centuries they began
To carefully journey ever higher
And because we’d almost forgot
them
We became fearful instead of bloodthirsty
And
they became bold and came onto
The earth of man and saw how
Everything had changed and
felt anger
At an Earth they no longer
belonged to
And
were no longer creatures of…
So they returned to the depths
and now
Come here rarely, for they’re angry
When they see the sons and daughters
Of
the race that forced them into
caves
To never again see the green
fields of life
They once loved, or the blue
streams
They swam in, or the sky and
clouds
That
were replaced by black ceilings
and walls
And floors that lead down
to nowhere.”
There
once was a cave in the deep
canyon floor
Through an entrance 2 by
2 feet high and wide
Hidden by brush and branches piled
high
After every flooding rain would
subside,
An
entrance cleared not from outside
but within
By cavers no taller than the
path that lead down
Who swung flint axes and granite
hammers at night
Until they’d opened a path
out of their den
Where
they leapt in dances of ancient
hatred
For the gods of battle and
revenge they worshipped
Who foretold the end of their
human foe
Who’d driven them deep
under the rock and usurped
Their
reign over sun and moon, day and
night.
Until they, First Lords of
the First Earth,
Would swarm some night
and execute their enemy
Who’d polluted their home
with the birth
Of
vermin they would only name “human
devils”
With their instruments
of conquest—buildings
and books,
That drove the First
Masters of the earth
Where they’d be safe from
human attacks
That
narrow and compress Nature to
fit
Our understanding rather
than our living in
awe
Of forces no one truly
understands
But accept as the unchanging
law
That
we fit ourselves into rather
than
force
To fit what we want
and choose to believe,
Especially if that
truth is efficient
and brutal,
As much alien as
human, brutal to
achieve.
Their
malevolent smiles are deceitful
as sin;
Their worst weapon,
and most dangerous,
hope,
Is the knife-edged
weapon that darkens
our minds,
Their Dark God,
the Black Goat.
Every
joke in their unhuman language
An invocation to
The Goat against
our existence
That drove them
under black soil
and rock
To resent and
hate us as the
nuisance
That
first led us to hurt and
trap
them
Then pursue
them in the
First
Genocide
Until we could
find them no
more
As they learned
to deeply burrow
and
hide.
But
wander into this cave
in
this deep
canyon
And you’ll hear sounds not of
the earth’s surface
Echoing up
from depths
no human
can live
in
And none
can climb
down
in their
narrowness.
The
Wee Men beneath the
world hate
and revel.
Hear them
growl,
hear how
they
snarl!
S. Beleu, July 2008
