The Abandoned God

In the cold darkness of eternity he sits, this god who has grown old. His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but man who made him has forgotten him.

Blue is his graven face, and silver-blue his hands. His eyebrows and his silken beard are scarlet as the hope that built him. The yellow dragon on his rotting robes still rears itself majestically, but thread by thread time eats its scales away, And man who made him has forgotten him.

For incense now he breathes the homely smell of rice and tea, stored in his anteroom; For priests the busy spiders hang festoons between his fingers, and nest them in his yellow nails. And darkness broods upon him. The veil that hid the awful face of godhead from the too impetuous gaze of worshippers serves in decay to hide from deity the living face of man, So god no longer sees his maker.

Let us drop the curtain and be gone! I am old too, here in eternity.