Girolamo Cardano, Physician, Natural Philosopher, Mathematician, Astrologer And Interpreter Of Dreams, Writes In His Diary Poem by Patrick L Kalahar

On this day of dark and dismal storms
Of lightning, silent but still speaking portents
And frissons of dark humors burning in the blood
I inscribe my dream or night terror:
Four men stand on a promontory of basalt black as starless sky
I, Girolamo Cardano
Faust, the learned Doktor
The Great Renunciator who sold his soul
To touch the black and beating heart
At the center of the Universe
To know what cannot be known
And his familiar - his second nature
Bound to him by a corroded chain
Great Mephistopheles who first seems a man
And then a great Land Leviathan with oozing skin
And finally takes on the aspect of a snake
With impossibly long forked tongue
That torments and teases Faust without respite
And there is writing on the tongue
Engraved as if with a stylus of jagged obsidian
In occult symbols and the old language before Babylon
Next to the Daemon stands von Nettlesheim
The great imposter and arch liar
Who fashions himself Henry Cornelius Agrippa
The greatest Magician-Astrologer and Necromancer who ever lived
Agrippa says: "I know what is written on the tongue!
I have read the Secret Book
Written in sand a million years
Before Great Babylon was born"!
Mephistopheles laughed - or screamed -
Or perhaps it was a hiss:
"Then speak! Give voice to what is written on the tongue
And stop the mechanism that runs the Universe
And utter Death to Time itself"
Agrippa began to speak in loathsome, guttural sounds
Of black bile and yellow that offended the senses

And then in a high, keening wail
That finally only the bats could hear
And they came up from a rift in the Earth
As numerous as grains of sand and carried him to Hell
At that instant I, Girolamo Cardano, Physician,
Natural Philosopher, Mathematician, Astrologer and Interpreter of Dreams awoke
To lightning, silent, but still speaking portents
I cannot remember the words written on the devil's tongue
But now I live in fear that some day...
In waking or in a dream... I might