The Book of the Damned

Again and again this phenomenon: Fourteen days later, at about the same place, more of these hailstones fell. Rivers of blood that vein albuminous seas, or an egg-like composition in the incubation of which this earth is a local center of development--that there are super-arteries of blood in Genesistrine: that sunsets are consciousness of them: that they flush the skies with northern lights sometimes: super-embryonic reservoirs from which life-forms emanate-- Or that our whole solar system is a living thing: that showers of blood upon this earth are its internal hemorrhages-- Or vast living things in the sky, as there are vast living things in the oceans-- Or some one especial thing: an especial time: an especial place. A thing the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's alive in outer space--something the size of Central Park kills it-- It drips. We think of the ice fields above this earth: which do not, themselves, fall to this earth, but from which water does fall-- Popular Science News, 35-104: That, according to Prof. Luigi Palazzo, head of the Italian Meteorological Bureau, upon May 15, 1890, at Messignadi, Calabria, something the color of fresh blood fell from the sky. This substance was examined in the public-health laboratories of Rome. It was found to be blood. "The most probable explanation of this terrifying phenomenon is that migratory birds (quails or swallows) were caught and torn in a violent wind." So the substance was identified as birds' blood-- What matters it what the microscopists of Rome said--or had to say--and what matters it that we point out that there is no assertion that there was a violent wind at the time--and that such a substance would be almost infinitely dispersed in a violent wind--that no bird was said to have fallen from the sky--or said to have been seen in the sky--that not a feather of a bird is said to have been seen--