style="font-size:15px;"> From the mouth of the metallic Tokoloshe
Protruded a long needle structure
With which it pierced her chest and heart
And as it sucked it grew.
Through the mists of her last agony
The mother of the wicked Za-Ha-Rrellel
Saw her son’s outrageous future;
She saw his great evil swallow the earth
And the Universe itself.
Too late she appreciated her error—
That after all the birds were right,
But now she could not destroy her child
To save all mankind from its atrocious influence.
Through eyes that were slowly glazing in death
She saw the object withdraw its cruel probe.
She saw it lay some hundreds of silvery eggs
At her son’s express command;
And they all exploded into hundreds
Of fast-growing winged things like itself.
The last thing she saw was how a litter of four
Bore her son aloft in triumph.
‘Farewell, mother,’ he said as he glanced back at her,
With a last contemptuous look in his eyes.
They carried him forth from the lighted cave
Into the darker parts of the caverns
And slowly the glow from all the luminous eyes
Faded in darkness in the echoing distance;
While with a last soft sigh Kei-Lei-Si died
Alone and utterly forgotten for all time to come
In that maze of underground tunnels.
The fantastic reign of the First Chief on earth,
That of Za-Ha-Rrellel was about to begin.
Today known as Tsareleli or Sareleli
He was the deformed incarnation of naked evil
And was about to burst upon the world
Like a glittering poisonous flower.
Woe, oh woe, to all mankind—
Woe to all those, as yet unborn!
Za-Ha-Rrellel, the Wicked, emerged from the tunnels,
Borne aloft by a litter of four of these metal things,
While all the rest of the metal Tokoloshes
Came swarming behind in a vast and glittering cloud
Awaiting his word to enslave and to kill.
The first that this airborne metallic army engaged
In a battle of complete extermination,
Was the Holy two-headed Kaa-U-La birds.
From miles away came the sacred birds
In hundreds upon thousands to stem the tide
Of evil in a final most desp’rate endeavour.
A mighty aerial battle took place
That lasted more than a hundred days without pause,
Watched in amazement by all men and all beasts.
The birds inflicted a great deal of damage
Tearing and ripping with talons and beaks,
But the poisonous stings of these metal things
Caused havoc among the attackers.
In their hundreds they fell down to earth,
Followed to be sucked of their blood
And as fast as these metal things nourished themselves
They produced more and more of their metal kind.
For each one destroyed by the Holy Birds
A thousand took its place
And thus the birds were soon heavily defeated
And the remnant fled to the ends of the earth.
‘All is lost!’ cried one as it flew away in the sunset,
‘Woe to mankind – woe to the world.’
But the millions of red-skinned First People
Who heard this last agonising cry
Did not understand its meaning.
They did not interpret it this way
Till many centuries later
When together with Za-Ha-Rrellel, the Wicked,
They died in agony;
They who were later to be known
As the Race That Died.
THY DOOM, OH AMARIRE!
After his victory over the Kaa-U-La birds,
The deformed offspring of Kei-Lei-Si,
Descended with his victorious hordes of insects
And promised the millions of hiding First People
A new life of plenty of luxury and peace
And pleasure in limitless measure.
At first he told them he was sent by a god
To vanquish the evil Kaa-U-La birds
Which had thus far been keeping all mankind
In savagery and ignorance;
That in fact the Great Spirit had sent him
To deliver them all from poverty and disease;
That
