Night is a nest. It is the starry mirror
Of waters which a rippling world reflects.
It whispers prayers in long-dead dialects.
It breathes upon a glass, and makes it clearer.
Uncounted stars, the sand on night-washed shores,
Sift softly, grinding, over gloom-gripped lands
In silence swaddled—bound in winding bands
Of stillness like a gauze. All nights are whores:
Night takes the ghost of life—the time, the toil—
In payment for the ghost of death it grants.
It is a bowl of bronze a-crawl with ants
Of gold. It is a spit. It is an eye.
Night is a garden fed with graveyard soil
Where metaphors like mushrooms multiply.