Look up into the night, but not to extend
divine order spun from the thoughts of men.
The dry moon hangs, skull to a Magdalen,
a mirror to the earth of beauty’s end.
Among those sparklers, set like frozen spray,
are some as cold: all their mutations done,
their spectral light’s a lesson to the sun
on what attends an incandescent day.
The star-swarms, the vast-wheeling galaxies,
dwindle to pin-points in speed-gathering flight
from a lost centre: seeming to press back
dimension’s imperceptible boundaries,
lose one another in the widening black.
Look down into your life and know the night.