What needs my Lovecraft to secure his place,
One Gahan Wilson’s image of his face,
He showed the prejudices of his kin,
For he was not born with such thoughts within,
But raised Dear son of Madness, heir of hate,
He still o’er aeons worked and changed his state
Saw Deep Ones’ joys as hallowed in the sea,
And Artic Old Ones worthy of his plea,
That though their forms were strange they should engage
Our sympathy, as men, of their own age.
Like us in reason, and in hope to live,
And stranger still the Yith, his words would give,
Life better yet, than ours, before and hence,
If he had lived what further recompense?
He died before the Holocaust, before the days
Of Segregation past, before the ways
To pay both man and women, saw decree
Oh from your pedestals be proud you were not he.
(For what it matters - the world fantasy awards are fully justified in making their award look like
what ever they like - it's their award, but I'm not sure any writer of fantasy born in 1890 to a white - at the
time relatively parochial, Providence family - who was mostly a self educated autodidact because of ill-ness drawing on the resources of a library mostly written in the 18th Century stood much chance of *not* being racist. Nor do they note the increasing sympathy in his writing for the very creatures that originally he wrote of as serving as analogues for his fear of the other. Had he not died at 47 in poverty and in pain, without knowing that his writing would still be esteemed today, perhaps he would have written something better pleasing to his critics than the racist verse he wrote at 22, and the fears shown in his earlier works. This is not to say he wasn't throroughly wrong and fat headed on these matters - but it is to say, hell what chance did he have?)