[BNP/E3, 49A2 – 69-70]

19-8-08

no. The Conscious Corpse

(A Madman’s Dream)

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I have no memory of how I was laid

In this coffin {…} and dread

My memory of all is {…} shade

Of all past in life before I was dead.

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Gradually I wake to a feeling weird,

To a feeling {…} and strange

Of a dreadful sense with {…} blurred

Of a terrible place, of a woeful change

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And I wake now clear and I find me shut

In a coffin dark, without air nor light

And the earth outside seemed to weigh

And {…}

I wept and I choked and I shrieked and tore

At the coffin wall {…}

But it was † sure like a trusty door

And the earth could weighed upon it cool.

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And I wept and shrieked, and in |*day| I pushed

And in fear too dread for my word to tell

But the earth outside all my {…} crushed

And wide, made a close, airless hell!

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I remember not how from that life I grieve

In the † forgot where I now was trust

But I knew that there I also should live

And I choked {…}

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end

?

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This is what in a night

A dreadful sin of misery

Sang not me from within me

{…}

          ___

          ___

[69v]

2

A wild terror mute made by {…} chill

And I grew mad, mad and I felt me so

In a woe, in so dead an ill

In so {…}, in so mad a woe.

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And I shrieked and laughed and I raged and beat

And the coffin’s wood with a hand that fled

But in vile cold was round me complete

And the night silence was for man the dread.

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Yet I lived I know not what damn’d thing strange

Kept me living now, kept me living there

And I bled and tore yet there was no change

And I breathed not yet I lived as with air.

_______

My madness sank into stupor mute

And I felt my rot and then rage returned

And a horror made every sense acute

And my bleeding hands the strange coffin spurned.

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And I lived I know not by what awful power

Without prolonged woe, with deep-lengthened fears

And I grew like bones coldly hour by hour

And I ate my flesh and drank my tears 

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[70r]

3.

Though I could not see yet my hideousness

I could feel with horror, with {…} shame

Yet I knew my bones and form still less

Like a thing that is when things[1] have no name.

And I grew mad, mad and I laughed at long

With a form no human can {…} or guess or think

For even my laughter cold and wrong

E’en the sound went not but on me[2] did sink

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Like an ugly abortion past all horror ill

A † thing I grew and felt me

And I laughed and † and I breathed still

And the coffin strong I felt still to be

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And I lived – yet I cannot tell how

Like a horror dim, yet I choked and fell

But living rot. Then I felt worms plow

All my body through with this squirming hell.

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And I shook and † still more wild and more

And my body † grew and all senses[3] did pass

And the worms itched † me and I grew a sore

And around me cold a deep silence was

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[70v]

A confused form of a million things

{…} all of arms I grew

{…} and there {…} and strings

Though my flesh were they, yet I felt them through

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I felt as my tongue the more itch and scratch

On my eyes they fed with a softened clutch

Paining a cry from and I could not snatch

I was still with form {…}

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And I felt on move a vast sea of worms

My old-self as life but yet alive to be mad

I felt all qualm, all a course-filled of squirms

I was not and was the worms that I had.

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I stretched hours of madness dread

And I spoke long hours that wore down my tongue[4]

I grew mad with qualms and with squirms. †

The same cold earth was, the same silence hung.

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At last {…}, at last, I woke

I could not weep for too much fear

I knew the symbol my soul spoke

{…}

I woke with mad † thrill

And lit the candle, that the night

Whose sight from my line had filled

Might cease to † up my sight.

And I grew chill at the dead song

That within me my soul did sing

With dreadful madness weird and long

And with a deep-insane ring.

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[1] that is when things /so diced it can\
[2] E’en the sound /Break on me\ went not but on me /like\
[3] senses /senses half\
[4] spoke long hours that wore down my tongue /ceased for hours weighed down my tongue\