Macrocosm

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.