Walking Under the Eclipse

© Steve King 2012 
All rights reserved 


So many ways they find to ogle their occult, 
while there are closer shadows,
darker places to explore. 

This artificial slice of night, 
that gives no pause
nor time for rest or cure— 
it is wide-eyed dreaming 
and they are all up-looking, 
outward and away.
What do they claim or hope to claim, 
with the mirrors of their eyes? 

It is still imagination,
this science of theirs,
more art than they would say: 
fixing eyes upon extinguished stars, 
searching for the certain fire-god
in beckoning vacuum,
a now indifferent Shiva
cutting loose all hell,
many arms weaving merry ends
to a posited fabric of creation. 

They ply the universal,
infinity their unit of regard,
squeezing inferences
out from nothing,
next to nothing,
indeed, the very ƒ{unction} of a nothing. 

How they do define us in that nothing: 
from the fire did we arise;
unto flames will we thus be consigned— 
all to cinders,
ash to ash,
the way it always was 
in the old books. 

How they do define us,

they who are agnostic
to all outcomes. 
What do they see,
or hope to see,
in the mirror of the sky?