On doit ce poème, paru en 1931 dans Weird Tales, à Robert E. Howard, d’ordinaire plus connu pour Conan le Barbare ou encore Solomon Kane. En ce qui me concerne, je lui dois une bonne part d’inspiration, que je reconnais de bonne grâce, pour Kiril Heidemann, ou plus précisément le Kiril qui a créé les Dévorantes et s’est employé, par le biais de Dresca, à les répandre sur le Monde de l’Oubli.

“The thief in the night” m’a rapidement menée au “Voleur d’Âmes” qui a longtemps été le surnom de Kiril (…avant d’être remplacé par celui de “transsexuel moldave”, mais je gage que ce dernier fait bien moins rigoler les joueurs depuis qu’ils en savent un peu plus à ce sujet). Les images de pourriture associées à celles des champs (the rust on the corn, the smut on the wheat, mildew…) ont donné les Dévorantes. Quant aux dernières strophes, elles sont plus en rapport avec d’autres choses vues et/ou commises par Kiril. Quoi qu’il en soit, je garde une affection quelque peu malsaine pour ce texte, que je trouve encore et toujours fascinant.

I am the thorn in the foot,
I am the blur in the sight;
I am the worm in the root,
I am the thief in the night.
I am the rat in the wall,
the leper that leers at the gate;
I am the ghost in the hall,
herald of horror and hate.

I am the rust on the corn,
I am the smut on the wheat,
Laughing man’s labor to scorn,
weaving a web for his feet.
I am canker and mildew and blight,
danger and death and decay;
The rot of the rain by night
the blast of the sun by day.

I warp and whither with drought,
I work in the swamp’s foul yeast;
I bring the black plague from the south
and the leprosy in from the east.
I rend from the hemlock boughs
wine steeped in the petals of dooms;
Where the fat black serpents drowse
I gather the Upas blooms.

I have plumbed the northern ice
for a spell like frozen lead;
In lost gray fields of rice,
I have learned from Mongol dead.
Where a bleak black mountain stands
I have looted grisly caves;
I have digged in the desert sands
to plunder terrible graves.

Never the sun goes forth,
never the moon glows red,
But out of the south or the north,
I come with the slavering dead.
I come with hideous spells,
black chants and ghastly tunes;
I have looted the hidden hells
and plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest
to cheer me by word or look,
There was never a man or beast
in the blood-black ways I took.
There were crimson gulfs unplumbed,
there were black wings over a sea;
There were pits where mad things drummed,
and foaming blasphemy.

There were vast ungodly tombs
where slimy monsters dreamed;
There were clouds like blood-drenched plumes
where unborn demons screamed.
There were ages dead to Time,
and lands lost out of Space;
There were adders in the slime,
and a dim unholy Face.

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone,
and the brain froze in my skull―
But I won through, I alone,
and poured my chalice full
Of horrors and dooms and spells,
black buds and bitter roots―
From the hells beneath the hells,
I bring you my deathly fruits

— Robert E. Howard, The Song of a Mad Minstrel