But if it was between chaos and creation, it was creation by God
or at least by the gods, something with an aim in its anarchy.
It was very different in the final stage of the descent, where my mind
woke up from its meditations. One can only say that the whole landscape
was like a leper. It was of a wasting white and silver and grey,
with mere dots of decadent vegetation like the green spots of a plague.
In shape it not only rose into horns and crests like waves
or clouds, but I believe it actually alters like waves or clouds,
visibly but with a loathsome slowness. The swamp is alive.
And I found again a certain advantage in forgetfulness;
for I saw all this incredible country before I even remembered
its name, or the ancient tradition about its nature.
Then even the green plague-spots failed, and everything seemed
to fall away into a universal blank under the staring sun,
as I came, in the great spaces of the circle of a lifeless sea,
into the silence of Sodom and Gomorrah.
For these are the foundations of a fallen world, and a sea
below the seas on which men sail. Seas move like clouds and
fishes float like birds above the level of the sunken land.
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