Next day, the dawn was a brilliant, fiery red and I wandered
through the weird and lurid landscape of another planet,
for the vegetation which gives Mars
its red appearance had taken root on Earth.
As man had succumbed to the Martians,
so our land now succumbed to the red weed.
Wherever there was a stream the red weed clung
and grew with frightening voraciousness,
its claw-like fronds choking the movement of the water.
And then it began to creep like a slimy red animal
across the land covering field and ditch and tree and hedgerow
with living scarlet feelers, crawling, crawling.
I suddenly noticed the body of a parson lying on the ground
in a ruined churchyard.
I felt unable to leave him to the mercy of the red weed,
and decided to bury him, decently.
Nathaniel! Nathaniel!