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.