Eclipse

The insomniac moon at 4.04 am hangs rust red in the west. Torn clouds circle an earth that is sliding, right now, in front of the rising sun. My lids are rolled in grains of sand, my head is scoured by thoughts I do not wish to have, my body jumps and twitches under the interrogation of the hours: why offer love where no love is? There were sunspots blazing in your hair. Your eyes were jet. Something immemorial on the planes of your face. Suffering and joy, poised equally before the possibilities of the world. Impossibilities. I never noticed before the slight out-thrust of the lower lip of that unkissable mouth. When I write world it should perhaps be eternity. When I write eternity it should be nothing. Or everything. Flares burn out thousands of kilometres into space and here on earth we contort, we genuflect, we dance, we bend in sorrow before strange gods. The meaning of the planets is in their conjunctions so far beyond our comprehension as to be meaningless. This is how astrologers talk of love. It is a sound of mourning cast upon the air, the silence in which a flame destroys the night. It is the equipoise of those celestial bodies passing each other, the unthought consummation that may consume a soul. While the body endures, out on the balcony, at 4.07 am, watching the shadow of the earth prevent the sun's light, for a moment, forever, illumining the moon.