If we are lucky

there will be time to imagine

how the dead might admire

this halo of cities but for now

we must follow the directions

one hand leaves for the other.

As in conversation sparks fly upward

so allegory takes wing against wreckage of night,

the swan song of a sun in its solitude.

In whose interest do they labor, we wonder,

these silhouettes of desire

cast back at us by the orphaned event?

& when no man remembers his mother or father

what can measure our loss – techné

as telos? At the vanishing point

where the mullah who fed his master’s gold bird

gives way to the Sand Reckoner

sifting grains of light

lip service is paid to the names

once strange to us – problems of navigation

that leave us all in the dark.