"Karl Edward Wagner - In the Wake of the Nught" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

IN THE WAKE OF THE NIGHT
an excerpt

Editor’s note: In the Wake of the Night was a long-planned Kane novel about
the voyage of the Yhosal-Monyr, originally referred to in Bloodstone.
Conceived to be 150,000 words long when finished, Karl recalled: “I’ve been
working on it since 1970, back during my stay in Haight-Ashbury, when
inspiration grabbed me while I was tripping on acid at a Procol Harum concert
at the Fillmore. “Although never completed, the following is from the novel’s
prologue.


Kethrid’s Dream

Rush, crash,
Waves fall back—
The sand, the surf;
Surf, sand—and back again.
At night...
Waves climb high, climb higher, and crest;
Then fall with a crash I can hear a thousand miles.
At night...
At night the black surf is a pounding beat,
A surging roar of the earth’s vast heart—
Pulsing life-flow of the universe of night—
A heartbeat I can hear a thousand miles.
At night...
When sleep will not come,
And restless, I feel the pulse, hear the roar
Of seething black surf on distant dark shores,
Where night has lain a thousand years.
And on what unseen coasts, on what untrod sands—
Where does the night close a veil never rent,
Only rippled by the roar of distant black surf?
To sight these coasts, to tread these sands,
To scale these cliffs, to know these lands,
Beyond the wake of the night...
The surf lures me on, sighing promises upon broken rocks.
Dare...
An unspanned ocean, to cross an unknown sea;
Know the vision of distant coasts,
Know the touch of unknown sands.
Dare to follow in the wake of the night.
The roar of the surf on uncharted shores—
Heartbeat of infinity, its pulse eternal—
Calls to me at night, as it will through night eternal.
Black surf in the night, challenging distant shores—
I hear its call ten thousand miles,
Across ten thousand years.