The longest night

The longest night is the longest day

juxtaposition of sun and sun

moon and moon in ecstatic ballet

light and light over a tiled floor

where names are renamed,

where words acquire new meanings for the night.

And the revelling takes on new shades

and people new hues

when yew trees extend their claws deep into the dusk

when the husk of what was is discarded

in the bonfire

and the pyre is delineated,

fiery line by fiery line,

minute after minute

by the failing light and the rising darkness.

The longest night of the year

lengthens and lengthens

and the lanterns flicker the way to the sphere

with the uncanny patterns,

some dance, enraptured,

some gambol with the giggling and the gay,

by the night immatured.

Behind the black birds-and-buds motifs

is secreted a spiral staircase.

Some, led by the nocturnal connoisseur,

will ascend this null point in space

and still the sclerotic buts and ifs

with the tongue-tying picture

of the city glazed in dazzling darkness

stripped of all merit and of all culpa

during the longest night of the kalpa.