History Of The Night

Throughout the course of the generationsmen constructed the night.

At first she was blindness; thorns raking bare feet,fear of wolves.

We shall never know who forged the wordfor the interval of shadow dividing the two twilights;we shall never know in what age it came to meanthe starry hours.

Others created the myth.

They made her the mother of the unruffled Fatesthat spin our destiny,they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cockwho crows his own death.

The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;to Zeno, infinite words.

She took shape from Latin hexametersand the terror of Pascal.

Luis de Leon saw in her the homelandof his stricken soul.

Now we feel her to be inexhaustiblelike an ancient wineand no one can gaze on her without vertigoand time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.