Noctuary II

Echoes of summons ring on. With them a sonorous clamour for painted lines. The rim of night stretches and holds fast to a colossal nocturne hung on furs-and-clouds walls, and a concentric image of life rotates on edges of weak silver. Long-dead poets campaign openly for verses – among them Wordsworth and Eliot – each putting a swagger to his arrogant gait of lines, sauntering towards a nest of whited papers. Initiation signs, nebulous, line the torso of night, and are etched deeply into the black bosom of distant whiffs of ceremonies, like faint stars of a tumultuous galaxy.