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Before putting forward the details of the analysis of the prose-poem, and the conclusions that resulted therefrom, I present the poem.1
REINCARNATION
The world was dark … black and dusty sepia with crawling green and livid putrefaction. Not a soul was about. The noiseless creep of the maggoty mobs moved from glut to glut. A flutter of wind made the noisome stench rise and hit savagely at nostrils which were not there. Nothing was there but hideous, cruel nothingness maniacally slashing this way and that; torturing itself to reach and crush a human sense.
And then it came. Out of that putrescent mass a seethe and slump, slow rising, slow sinking. And the air stood stiller, held petrified lest what it sought had come.
The stilled and overpowering stench closed up ready for its lethal spring.
The seethe appeared once more, took shape as an 'excrescing' pimple, black-green with poisonous maroon purplings, and venous-blooded specks flirted with orange slits.
In hysterical rage lest death should rise again, the concentrated stench flung itself upon the offending seethe. And down it flumped, splayed out like a liquid mud, into the sucking mass.
But life was there, a flicker so small it only felt itself as there against the thing that pressed upon it; and in that knowledge was the last thread broken.
From out that liqufeying lump shot forth the foulest miscenations and grappling with the great flat lumping hand that held it down bit and tore it to shreds.
This done, it rose on all fours, struggled drunkenly its unplanned course, knowing there was a confine to the clammy, noisome world which held it. From out that confine it would hurl itself or, failing, know no more.