The Ancient City Of Lon Poem by David Lewis Paget

We went down in the submersible
Just Andy Malone and me,
The project wasn’t reversible
Beneath the Andaman sea,
The funding for it a one-time off
So we needed to get it done,
To investigate the sunken state
Of the ancient city of Lon.

We knew it was there from a sonic probe
That had mapped the sunken bed,
Five centuries it had been down there
From the documents we’d read,
There were buildings, markets, standing still
And a huge cathedral dome,
We needed to take some photographs
To show to the folks back home.

It was over a thousand fathoms deep
So the pressure was intense,
With systems go, the descent was slow
And it kept us in suspense,
We wondered how it had got down there
How the land had slipped away,
To carry a city so deep with what
Had once comprised a bay.

The beam of the single searchlight pierced
Its way through the deepening murk,
The further that we descended meant
We were peering into the dark,
But then at a thousand fathoms we
Caught sight of the massive dome,
It was almost like the cathedrals that
Had once been built back home.

With cameras flashing furiously
We continued our descent,
Noting the gaps where windows once
Had peered on out at Lent,
But we didn’t think it was christian
For the Hindu figures swarmed
Over the outer surfaces
Where once, the sun had warmed.

The beam had picked out an archway then
With the entrance from a porch,
Some of the pillars had fallen in
And the doors were gone from the arch,
We headed into the darkened space
Our light picked out in the gloom,
And chills were rippling up my spine
As we entered that darkened room.

We floated in and along the aisle
Where the pews were made of stone,
It had the eeriest feeling like
We weren’t in there alone,
And at the end was an altar stood
As it had, five hundred years,
And by its side was a figure crouched
Or the bones of a figure, cursed.

The searchlight gave it an eery glow
As we turned and travelled back,
There was something strange about that thing
For all the bones were black,
And lying flat on the altar stone
Was a weird and evil gleam,
A blade rose up from a corpse on that
But the bones were white and clean.

‘They must have been making a sacrifice
At the moment disaster struck, ’
Said Andy, as we peered on out,
And he turned to take a look,
The crouching figure began to rise
In the current our craft had spawned,
And in the beam we could see the gleam
Of a pefect pair of horns.

It seemed that it reached on out to us
With its bony fingers raised,
It appeared to point to Andy who
Screamed out, like someone crazed,
I heard a thump and I turned to him
Just as my partner fell,
All burned and black as his flesh had peeled
In a vision straight from hell.

I headed the craft toward the arch
In a panic, I confess,
My friend lay dead and I lost my head
And I think you’d not do less,
I left that place in a burning haste
With its devil crouched once more,
Back and beside that altar stone
It will stay forevermore.

They said it must be a power short
That had burned and killed my mate,
But I said, ‘Look at the pictures, you
Will see the face of hate, ’
Of one thing I can be certain now
That the funding all has gone,
There’s no-one keen to explore once more
The ancient city of Lon.

24 July 2015