The Anti-Day

The Anti-Day

If only, we think, decline could be

absolute as its reputation—

a sinking by slow foretold degrees

behind a cliff brightness

backlights to black,

aweing the mourners’ glances

with Turneresque shades

of sepulchral attrition....

                                     

But no—subsiding whispers

to the too attentive eye—

I’ll not be held to a schedule

of decay, denied my tricks and reversals,

my kit bag of paradox.

And so, with dusk already clotting, 

a ray shoots straight out

from the distant wall

through a crack no ant could navigate,

or a glow suffuses clouds

from below, an expected effect,

but not in hues of freshest peach and

rose without a hint of melancholia.

And now, merveille des merveilles, 

the disappeared white disc pops up

again above the rim,

wobbling with a shimmer akin

to heat haze, but it’s no mirage:

blood reds and fateful gloaming are done,

it really means to climb a triumphant

arc back again, cross sky’s                   

stock trajectory and undo extinction,        

paralysing with joy

and perplexing resignation.