Stage Direction
It is a shabby backdrop of bright stars:
one of the small interstices of time:
the worn out north star northward, and Orion
to westward spread in ruined light. Eastward,
the other stars disposed,—or indisposed;—
x-ward or y-ward, the sick sun inflamed;
and all his drunken planets growing pale.
We watch them, and our watching is this hour.
It is a stage of ether, without space,—
a space of limbo without time,—
a faceless clock that never strikes;
and it is bloodstream at its priestlike task,—
the indeterminate and determined heart,
that beats, and beats, and does not know it beats.
Here the dark synapse between nerve and nerve;
the void, between two atoms in the brain;
darkness, without term or form, that sinks
between two thoughts.
Here we have sounded, angel!—
O angel soul, O memory of man!—
And felt the nothing that sustains our wings.
And here have seen the catalogue of things—
All in the maelstrom of the limbo caught,
and whirled concentric to the funnel’s end,
sans number, and sans meaning, and sans purpose;
the lack of meaning has a heart-beat, and
the lack of number wears a cloak of stars.
