In my footsteps and furtive tread The galleries awoke with sound Echoed the unspoken words Dead litanies drip from the walls Black language laden with venom Syllables best left unuttered They are woven from the marrow of night Under the monstrous pall of unguessable ages Weathered and beaten From aeons long gone Centuries beyond centuries They etched into the stone Voice from the earth Echo of the depths In eternal discourse, remains To abyss, they call Choked with dust and shadow Embrasures seethe unseen Suddenly revealed, visageless effigies Seemed to shrink from the light Mouths frozen open, eyes staring blind Flickering bleeds into the shapes Wrack the immovable with motion Thousand arms reach from the darkness Light-drawn from suggestion Caught between movement Resolving after I pass The light grows dim, the hours late But the passages before me stretch I move in naught but intent, reduced to dust A shadow cast by no light